Contributed by Nancy C
I try to keep my Facebook feed focused on art and beauty for the most part, but I keep thinking back to the day, the hour, the minute, I broke my knee. Through all the difficulties and inconveniences, I always say “it could be worse.” In a split second, entire lives can change.
Being laid up a bit, I’ve had time to think and write. This is long, but I must respond to the internal violence our country continues to suffer from. As I write this in early July, 309 mass shootings have taken place this year already. I am, we are, a deeply grieved nation. Negative comments will only prove my points.
What if…
What if we added meditation - directing thoughts towards peaceable living - in elementary grades…? What if we focused more on how to deal with anger and sadness, and on acts of kindness in third grade… What if there were rewards for acts of kindness in middle and high school, especially when given to those who wouldn’t expect it, like the outcasts and those who are different… All this, instead of focusing on who we’re going to sleep with when we’re adults; what gender we are most attracted to. What if we focused more on accepting others and ourselves, rather than focusing on our differences?
What if we banned being entertained by violence…? What if we replaced that time with the use of our minds to solve problems and encourage creative thinking...? What if we made major changes to video games, tv shows and movies that our youth are ingesting and looked instead for joy, laughter, and curiosity to fill their hours? We are a growing culture of people trying to eat healthy food, shouldn’t we be as careful with what we feed our minds?
What if we, as adults, led by example…What if we, as adults, learned to compromise more often… What if when we disagree, we sat quietly for a few minutes, putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes… What if we didn’t need everyone to think like us or agree with us?
I do not believe there is a quick fix of any kind to the internal violence in our country, but we must start somewhere. Why don’t we focus on raising a new generation? When we have been attacked by outside
forces, it is most often by the extremists. We must be careful to not become what we feared the most…. Or we may implode.
Gun laws, politics, gender, life partners…the list goes on. If we continue to be in complete opposition on every issue and continue to react instead of thoughtfully finding solutions to respond, we will only continue in this dangerous direction we are heading. We cannot continue to look to blame, but instead take responsibility.
What if we, as adults, focused on the rights and needs of others instead of ourselves? During this time of the “I” (phones, pads…) me, me, me, my rights, can you just imagine if we focused on you?
What if we allowed our children to pray to the God their families believe in during school, rather than us crying out after the violence “why God, why!!?”
What if… Why not?
