Can't Sleep, Too Much Crap In the World

The World needs to change. The U.S. needs to change NOW. No one needs an assault weapon. Give me one reason why. No one needs permission to carry a gun on the street for any reason if you're a civilian. We're the only country that does this shit and says we're proud of it. Racism has to end. We are no different from each other. The culture/race/religion you disagree with probably disagrees with your culture/race/religion too. What makes yours the right one? Why does there HAVE to be a right one and the disagreement have to be be there to begin with? Why can we not celebrate and embrace differences? And why do we have to hate and kill and be violent? 

Prayers do not solve problems. If you pray and feel it helps, keep doing it. That positive energy will help move you forward but it's a time of action. The words you say in your prayers? Your actions have to match up with them. You can't pray for peace in the world and then call someone a nigger. You are not a Christian or a Muslim or a Buddhist, etc if that is your thought process. That stems from nothing but hatred and division and tell me....please tell me, honestly, one positive thing that stems from that. One thing that betters the world and is not negative and hateful from using that kind of language and demoralizing someone like that. Tell me one thing that's not intended to have negativity associated with it and is intended to move things forward. Tell me why that's a good thing to do. And if you can't answer those questions then why do it? And if your answer is "it's fun or funny or I feel good or they deserve it" you need to look a lot deeper than you're looking and see if you're a bigger part of the problem than you think. Same if you think it's ok to call a gay person a fag, a lesbian a dyke, a woman a slut, a Muslim a terrorist....this goes on for days. 

Because someone is different than you, it does not make them any worse than you. There are many people in this world that are extremely different than you who have made this a better world for you to live in. Are there those who are different who have made it a worse world? Yes. But so have people of your own gender, class and race. You were born the gender, class and race you were by chance. You could have just as easily never had the ability to read this post because you could've been born into an underprivileged background with a completely different set of circumstances where the Internet would not be something you'd even have access to if you were even privileged enough to be literate. And your view of the world would be very different. You could have been the person being shot because of the color of your skin. Or you could have been the mentally ill person who could not get care but COULD get access to assault weapons and act out on his issues inspired by hatred and division that our society just feeds like a never ending circle. 

Please let's change this finally. It doesn't happen with just a prayer or saying "I'm sick of it" or "when's it going to stop". We can't rely on politicians to do it for us. They have not. Things are getting worse. That has to be said. We have to own that and say "no more". And that doesn't have to be a scary thing. It can be an exciting change. Just start talking. Stand up for what you believe in. Share the positive instead of the hatred. Make that the new norm. Go out of your way and make yourself a little uncomfortable. Have a conversation with someone that you normally wouldn't and see that we're all essentially alike despite different beliefs or cultures. We're all human and want happiness. And we have so many fascinating things we can learn from each other. Imagine what an exciting world that could be where the guard that we put up ourselves could be dropped and instead we can come together without judgement and instead find common ground and learn from one another. What sounds better? That or assault rifles, blood, name calling, division, hatred, disrespect and violence? Because that's where we are right now. It's not where we have to be though. Make the change. 

I buried my father today. At his funeral, which was officiated by a childhood friend of his who was a deacon, we were able to have a singer sing his favorite song, John Lennon's, Imagine, at the end of his ceremony. The deacon said that he didn't think there was a better song to sum up my dads life and the way he lived it. It's a beautiful song and I think it became an instant classic because it does resonate with so many of us. Obviously it moved us all to tears at his funeral, but it's a song that has the power to do that outside of funerals as well because I do believe we all so desperately want that and it is attainable. Stop imagining now and embrace it as a reality.