As a white, female, Jewish American from a privileged upbringing in the suburbs of New York City, I admittedly have never experienced the direct mechanisms of hate. I have not been racially profiled, jailed, threatened with deportation, locked out of opportunities, or subjected to violence and the daily threat of violence. I can only imagine the emotions that such experiences engender. I feel indignant that people who look like me have committed such heinous acts and continue to act with remorseless impunity.
To those people I say, you may look like me, but something about you is different. You have a disease impairing your sensibility, and that disease is called hate. By other names it is greed. It is racism. It is war.
Look at your hands. The way the fingers move. The way skin, that velvety barrier between air and organs melts across your sinew and bone. Think about the way those fingers move, how they dance, the things they are capable of.
Now look around. What do you see? Walls, maybe a window? Outside the sun shines down its nourishing rays equally upon rich and poor, healthy and sick, the kind and the cruel.
We've inherited these hands the same way we've inherited this Earth. We did not create them, nor do we own them. Think about that.
There are those who would protect the haves and take from the have nots. To these people I would say woe unto you, because you don't know that whatever you do to another is done unto you. You are not different from the other, and in fact
There is no other.
Zoom out now and look at our planet. The celestial globe floating like an iridescent gem in its atmosphere, suspended between unfathomably large stretches of vacuum amidst star and supernova. There we are, man and woman, rich and poor, populating and laughing and dying on that blue globe. Should we pit one against the next, fighting over resources, squandering our talent and ingenuity in raping and pillaging this gorgeous planet that sustains us?
Because you are brown, and I am white. Because you are man, and I am woman. Because you are gay, and I am straight.
Because you are Christian and I am Jew. Because you are Muslim and I am Buddhist.
Because you are you, and I am me?
This
is
an egregious
Mistake.
Let's have pity and compassion for those afflicted with the disease of hate.
Let us not give morally bankrupt mutants with the inability to see humanity beyond the confines of their own skin the power to make us feel anything other than beautiful, capable, connected, free, and whole.
I need you, my friends. To listen. To unify. To mobilize. Let's put down our phones and our small problems and open our eyes. Connect with the beauty around us. Find out how we can help, create, and get involved. I got your back!
I'd like to know, where do you stand in this dilemma, friend? All of us are in the same pot, and it's starting to boil.