You know how when you're a kid, and you don't quite understand how the world works yet, everything seems simpler? No one was having sex, no one taking away rights, that we knew of. There were no grey areas. Everything was pretty black and white. Either right or wrong, good or evil. We didn't care about politics. We repeated what we heard adults say but we didn't understand any of it. Even after we grow up, we never really fully appreciate the rose colored glasses we wear, and of true hardships, not these so called "first world probs." But I guess that's the perk of growing up in a first world country. This past summer my family and I took a road trip up to Niagara Falls. We camped our way up north, stopping to see the sights along the way. Mountains and rivers, even Lake Erie. Right before we reached Niagara, we stopped in Buffalo for the night, and we had Chipotle for dinner. Have any of you ever seen those two-minute essays they put on the cups? I found an interesting one by Neil Gaiman that'd like to share with you:
"I am thinking about the fragility of civilization. Look around you, at the building you are in, the road you travel on. What you see was made by people who agreed that they would get up in the morning and go to work and nobody would shoot at them or fire mortars at them; there would not be checkpoints at which they could be taken out and never seen again; that there would be food in the shops, and water in the taps, and shoes to buy and to wear. People who believed that the place you go to sleep tonight will be here tomorrow. There are now 50 million refugees in the world today, more than at any time since the end of the Second World War. And at some point, for each one of those people, the world shifted. Their world, solid and predictable, erupted or dissolved into chaos or danger or pain. They realized they had to run. You have two minutes to pack. You can only take what you can carry easily. You are going to have to walk a long way. You hope that somewhere, someone is going to take you in. I have started to think of humanity as a family: a family that quarrels, but which must, when things get hard, put aside old arguments and divisions and care for each other. Sometimes someone needs somebody to take them in, and that's the function of family. It's time to care.
"You have two minutes to run. What will you take with you?"
Pretty thought provoking isn't it? What would you bring with you if you only had two minutes to pack up and leave your home? Where would you go? Who would you turn to? More importantly, what would you feel, if after your own people have pushed you out and you seek refuge somewhere that is supposed to uphold certain moral values in regards to helping people, treats you like the enemy. They treat you like you're in on it, like you want to harm the people you're seeking help from. Just because you're from the same region and same religion as the ones who caused the turmoil. Perpetuation of stereotypes are pretty harmful. But the worst part about stereotypes, and the reason they are the single greatest example of human stupidity, is that despite our constant complaint of stereotypes, we only combat a small portion of it. We only fight the ones that apply to ourselves, and we fail to see the big picture. Stereotypes don't just apply to race. Stereotypes apply to cultures, languages, religion…..even the different generations make stereotypes against each other. Your generation this, your generation that, back in my day we did this. But our generation does it to. And it's our generation that will make the biggest impact for the future. As much as we want to call the old timers out on their insults, there are many of us who only prove their arguments. We call them stuck in their ways and we feel like we're the intelligent ones who know better. Truth of the matter is they do have a lot of wisdom to offer us, because they have lived a lot longer. On that same token, our generation has a lot to offer as well. Our generation wasn't raised with incessant prejudiced behaviors like our parents were. We didn't live through civil rights movements so we can't understand the hardships, but because someone else did, we live in a more united society than our predecessors ever did. And yet today, despite this grand achievement, we are still divided. When we were kids these things went over our heads, they didn't exist. Now we repeat them because that's what our parents did. Change doesn't come from us complaining on Facebook. It comes when we start setting the example for those that come after us. We're all the same creatures. We come in different colors and sizes, we have minute differences in bone structures. But our hearts and minds are the same. Inside, we're all human.
