Yesterday I was raising questions of myself, for myself, perhaps trying to uncover a good place for myself, connecting faith and observational rules. This place would allow for a melding of the two, a niche of security, yet also allowing for an ongoing evaluation, reassessing and acceptance and/or challenge, without losing my way. To remain without that flexibility is to accept a rote and routine which too often saps the freshness of commitment to belief, exactly that staleness I wish to avoid. Certainly not easy, and the temptation to avoid the challenge, to remain comfortably where I am is always there; hence the necessity at times to give myself a proverbial kick start and get where I need to go.
However, faith is not the only area which must undergo challenge and change. That is the area of principles, the tenets by which one rules one's life. Going way, way back into the midst of long ago time, I can see my evolution of my political credo. I believe it was in 6th grade when I was first awakened and I realized I could think of myself as a separate and distinct me, not merely an echo of my parents' beliefs and thoughts. It didn't necessarily make my parents happy, but then again it didn't necessarily keep me happy all the time either.
Like many of my generation we felt a strong connection between ourselves and the freshness of JFK, of an RFK, who challenged us to be better, to question and improve, to face the odds and overcome them, to remain true to the concept of an America always striving to live up to goals and moving the milepost when these goals were reached, never to remain static, never to give in to discouragement and always be of service to humanity.
Needless to say, the assassination of both men and the return of a stale political entity, one of hollow words and promises soured many of us and the ideal of America we had bought into became lost in the shuffle and the metal and mettle of Americans lost its shine, overcome by ever encroaching tarnish. That crushing disillusionment and disappointment, both childish and not, played significant causative roles in the developing violence of the backlash effect upon our generation. My generation wallowed in uncertainty bouncing back and forth from what is now uselessly segmented in stiff unbending line into conservative versus liberal, and never the twain shall meet. In the midst of and because of this uncertainty and rigidity America too often lost its way as did its citizens. The anger displayed in recent years, so inimical to any rational discussion of ideas, of thoughts, of beliefs touching upon the political world, has led us astray, exacerbating the entire situation. Perhaps to a point where there is apparently no toolbox, no tools to put it right.
I, and many of my generation, are finding ourselves mostly uncomfortable and frightened of the world we know, the one we live in, so eminently not the world we expected to find, or the world we expected to create. Instead of encouragement we have discouragement. Instead of forward thinking we have a rigid, foolish, dangerous, harkening to the errors of the past where we engage in pick and choose operation, a legitimate activity if one picks and chooses the righteous, the respectful, the legitimate, the humane - and we have so eminently not done so. As an inevitable result we and the world have gone astray and so often, too often, continue to do so.
Perhaps worst of all is that we have thrown away and stepped upon our glasses with the rosy lenses and picked up cracked lenses presenting a skewed world, an ugly one, where the love, the joy, is being overcome by the hate, the nastiness, the meanness so prevalent these days.
Do we know what must be done to collect all the broken pieces and solve the problem as to how to do so, to safely and constructively place them so as to create a set of lenses allowing for growth of and in a forward optimum direction? Will we have cleared enough vision to counteract the growing trend towards repression and cancelation of rights, the ever-increasing demonization of those who do not fall in line and the astonishing revival of pseudo-science.
Will we seek out the best rather than the worst, so prevalent these days? We must, it is critical we do so no matter how difficult, no matter the opposition. We need leaders capable of ignoring those broken pieces, leaving them on the ground to disintegrate. They, we, will rebuild from scratch, allowing for a clear and uncontaminated, unskewed, unperverted viewpoint. Together we can see clearly ahead. See where we must go, what we must do. See the errors of our ways and the nakedness of the incompetent, inefficient, harmful, deranged and crooked, repressive, some even treasonous characters, false leaders, we have of late ensconced in the political realm.
Do we have within us that which is necessary to right the wrongs, to perhaps return to the better part of our past? To dream the impossible dream and strive to make it so? Can we put our Humpty Dumpty of a nation back together again? Only this time it will not be with the harmful Kingsmen, but rather it will be through the efforts of the people of this nation. As it should be. As it must be.
Back up to the top. My political credentials have basically remained the same, albeit with a little tinkering here and there. Reality has forced me to modify some, to understand that what we dream of, and should dream of, is not always possible to make exactly so, but still, the dream must be there.
So yes, sixth grade perhaps here I come. A bit tattered and torn, a bit disillusioned and disappointed but still there in essence.
Mrs. Saperstein, thank you.
In fact, it must be so,
for if we do not
remember our yesterdays,
we will ruin our todays,
and certainly, we will darken
all our tomorrows to come.
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