I starting writing this earlier today and it didn’t feel like anything resembling a list of gratitudes. Apparently, thinking about 9/11 can have that effect on me… It ended up being kind of a “wish list” at the end, but it took some work to get there. (Note: there are some naughty words in here, so if you have delicate sensibilities, you may want to put on some protective eyewear before reading any further.)
I’ve forgotten a lot about the year 2001, but I remember where I was on 9/11. I was reading in the lunchroom at school when I looked up and saw a group of people staring at a TV up on the wall. I walked over there just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center and left to go to class just as the first tower started to collapse.
People saw it as a national tragedy and I think it unified the country in a way. It gave us something we could look at and say, “That was bad.” Everyone had that and we all fit inside one “That was bad” circle of a Venn diagram. And so that’s my one gratitude for today:
- Unity.
Unfortunately, it’s a better gratitude for 2001 than 2018. There’s still a great deal of unity—maybe even more now—but I recommend you avoid applying Venn diagrams unless you’re a big fan of circles that don’t touch.
I’d like to mention here that I want to see ZERO comments pointing fingers or placing blame on the current state of the country. It doesn’t matter how we got here. The point is that we’re here.
We may never see that overall sentiment of “That was bad” again. Our society has become so fragmented and compartmentalized and separated that if one group of people thinks, “That was bad”, you’ll find another group that thinks, “Yaaaaay!”
“They believe something or they have something or they are something that I don’t like, so fuck ’em.”
And that kind of sentiment has become so widespread, it’s sickening. There was a time when a car driving into a crowd of people was “That was bad” by default. Now if it’s a crowd of protesters, “Good! They deserved it! The car should have hit and killed more of them!”
HOW IS THAT OKAY?!?!
But it is. All kinds of people from all sorts of different circles are embracing it. If you don’t like someone, we’ve gone waaaaay beyond “I’m not going to invite them to my birthday party.” Now it’s “They’re not like me, so fuck ’em.”
When this stuff started bouncing around in my head, I thought about writing “You’re not like me”, but we don’t even have that anymore. It’s not “you and me”, it’s “us and them.” So many people just love staying in their circles and have no problems sitting back and blaming people on the outside for pretty much anything they don’t like.
I wish I had an answer. I wish I had an idea of how to fix things. I wish I had a gigantic Band-Aid that I could put over the entire country and all our problems would eventually scab over, then fall off and we’d be healed. Unfortunately, they don’t make Band-Aids that big. And even if they did, a lot of us (myself included) have trouble not picking scabs before the wound is fully healed.
This is as far as I got until reading something at work and the author used the word “empathy.” We could definitely use a lot more of that. So I looked back at what I wrote and thought, “What are some ways to combat this mindset that so many people have? What can people do for themselves that’ll help ease their frustrations? How can we heal the world, make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race?” (No, I honestly have no idea why that song popped into my head.) So here’s my wish list for everyone:
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Empathy
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Compassion
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Listening
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Understanding
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Acceptance
