Please feel free to answer these questions on your blog or in the responses. If you leave me a link to your post, I will re-post it on my blog. You can also feel free to forward these questions to anybody who might be interested. Thank you to those who have already shared their thoughts.
If you could make one change in the world, what would it be?
I would change hatred to, if not love, than tolerance. We are too focused on the difference in our world. Skin color; height; hair color; eye color. Which side of the boundary line do you live on? Do you have money? Are you homeless? Are you…. are you…..
People are so fixated on division because of differences, they have forgotten that addition is so much healthier. And happier.
So we are different. So are trees and birds and lions, even among their own species. Why do we think we have the lock on differences just as we think we have the lock on intelligence, cognitive thinking and emotions?
Because we, as humans, are arrogant. We believe the line about men having dominion over all the plants and animals of the world.
Let’s think about this. Do we, as humans, have the right to lord over all the animals and plants? And, incidentally, all other humans whom we consider inferior?
We are part of life, not the owners or creators of life. We live, however, by differences, by separating ourselves from anything we consider inferior. Lions. Trees. Birds. And, by the way, those people across the fence who aren’t like us. We don’t like them.
Fairy tale or not, maybe we can’t all love each other. That is asking an awful lot of ourselves and I don’t think we are ready to that kind of love. But can we at least learn to tolerate those who are different?
Listen to them talk. Ask them where they grew up? How their culture is different from our own? Their favorite book?
Who knows, maybe one day, we might just realize we aren’t so different after all.
A Writer's Life 