Lucky me, Lucky you

If you're reading this, you're lucky. Just as I am lucky. You were born in an era of remarkable discovery, change, and improvement. You were born in the greatest country on the planet at this time. You were given opportunities...to learn, grow, have three square meals in your belly each day, go to college, have a career, go on vacation, move about freely, change jobs, stay home and raise a family...The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave handed these possibilities, and many more to you. You can be born poor, rich, or in between. The color of your skin can be any of a virtual skin rainbow, yet you can grasp these opportunities as well. You most likely have more than one television in you home, more than one car in your driveway, more than one child...the list is endless.
Yet, as a nation, we can not seem to get along. Black teenagers are racially profiled, and killed by policemen. Retaliation/retribution rears its head as angry people, already incensed by a feeling of injustice, take the law in to their own hands and meet out a sentence they deem fitting. Gays are ridiculed for what some believe are life choices, while others believe that some people are just born with a predilection towards homosexuality. Fat people are mocked, ridiculed, and even sometimes physically assaulted simply because they're overweight. Older folks are made targets of scams that take their life savings. Not because they're stupid, but because they grew up in an era where a person's word was their bond.
My point in all of this is that for a nation of people who, for the most part live in daily excess, we've lost sight of the individual value of a person. We've stopped looking at people's hearts, and never really try to look beyond the surface. Skin color only makes us appear different. Underneath that, we're all the same. Sexual preferences are a private matter. Obesity is a national epidemic. And the older generation is set on the back burner far too often. Everyone's so tied up in getting ahead, having more than their neighbor, and appearing to live the perfect life, that they've lost sight of what living is all about. It's about relationships. And, about investing time in people's lives. Becoming a person of integrity takes effort, and there are so many these days who think it's just not worth that effort.
Whether or not I agree with you politically should have no bearing on who you are as a person. Because you and I exist....we matter. Or, at least we should matter to each other.
All of the technology in the world can't replace understanding that at the core of our being we need human interaction. It's how we're built. We can reason and have emotions on purpose. Our differences should draw us to each other, not tear us apart leaving us in such a shambles that the effort to repair the damage is just too daunting. There are strident voices making a cacophony of noise about the injustices we see, but offering no solutions. This only ends up fueling the fires that divide. Are we going to get so "used" to the basest behavior that we let that become our norm? I hope not. I learned a simple lesson as a child, and I tried diligently to pass it on to my children. "Two wrongs don't make a right." It almost seems we've tossed reasonableness out the window and replaced it with...nothing. "When you aim at nothing, you'll hit it!" This is so true, and in the case of our country, it's dangerously true. Because, while leaders fan the flames that create the divide, others will see that they could now move in and dismantle this nation, and that would be the most incredibly stunning loss. We can't know how we'd even respond if there were no more America. The only thing that will ease the tensions we see and feel right now is to start focusing outward, to really, truly see each other, and to make strides toward trying to understand those who are not the same as ourselves.