June is Seniors Month or Pride Month depending on your source of information.
We’ll recognize both labels and summarize with …”just care for your fellow human.” No matter if old, young, female, male, queer, straight, or transforming, as long as they are accepting of who they are. As importantly, what may matter more is that we accept everyone as human beings. We may not agree with how they choose to live, who they think they are, but we must acknowledge they are human beings deserving of respect and acceptance from all of us.
Humanity is bitter-sweet, tinged and tainted by malevolence as as well as a benevolence. Consider how arguably the most outstanding country in the world, the United States, is shackled by the millstone of gun violence, racism and misogyny. Claiming itself the greatest democracy in the world, it cannot escape the social flaws that torment it daily.
There are no solutions to the social problems exhibited in the United States every day. They do not exist. Band-Aids are found, temporary fixes or partial solutions but the chronic ills of society remain, inescapable. A year after the death of George Floyd, the ugly face of racism continues to torture American society everywhere and regularly. The trial and sentence given to the chief perpetrator of Floyd’s death have not moved the dial of the America’s social clock one iota toward real equality, balanced justice, and social parity.
Society is to blame for the problems in the United States, not Americans. Society is comprised of evil doers. Despicable events occur regularly, depravity happens anywhere and everywhere in the world. There are no workable solutions that can move us forward steadily at improving our society. Nothing has worked and probably nothing will, at least not in the foreseeable future given how we live today.
Yet hope and optimism must not be abandoned. Society has good people in it too. People who work to improve life for others, people who donate time, energy and effort to helping their fellow man, people who create institutions and organizations to help those who need help. These people are our front-line workers, our food bank organizers, our charity workers and supporters, our medical teams working to assist the sick, the afflicted and the addicted members of our society. These are the do gooders of our society and we are thankful for having them.
As a dark side exists in society everywhere, there is a shining side too. Thank goodness. It needs continuous support and help. We cannot become discouraged and disheartened. We must continue to believe, to hope, to be optimistic that though we may never reach the idealist goal of which we all dream, we are always inching toward it.
We must be reminded of the words of an renowned American leader, Abraham Lincoln, when he expressed the hope in his first inaugural speech with the hope that “the better angels of our nature” will touch the nation again. We too must be so encouraged.
Believe and support our better angels.
