Coexist: Shift Your Thinking

I was behind a car with the Coexist bumper sticker, you know, where every letter is a religious symbol? Yesterday as I sat there, I realized that it's not saying that we should all change and become a Giant Cult.

The sticker is saying we should be peaceful.

There is a push for peace out there. I think there always has been, but why hasn't it happened?

In order to truly live and coexist with your neighbor in peace, you have to be willing to do two things: Love, and Forgive.

Now, first of all, when I say love I do not mean that you are bubbling over with affection and care, I mean that you have to not hate them with a passion.

This takes Like, Teamwork, and Cooperation.

Liking someone means you have to put aside your differences, find common ground, work as a Team, and Cooperate when necessary. If you put this in the perspective of a community, there is no gate, but there is a Housing Authority and it's rule is: whatever your neighbor does, accept it, forgive them, and help them if they allow you to.

It begins by understanding that not all people are out there to hate you.

It begins by knowing that people of other religions are mostly peaceful. Just because they worship a different God doesn't make them evil.

Religion is a big part of being healthy, because it makes you think outside of yourself. No matter what God you pray to, you open up to something bigger; you hope, you thank, you count your blessings; and then you begin to think about your family, your loved ones, the problem with your neighbors; and then you think about what you can do to fix that problem, and maybe the solution is for you to stop hating them.

They need to make a Coexist bumper sticker with people of different skin tones and nationalities using their bodies to make the letters, because racism is still epicly abundant.

You can't love others, in a general, you-would-serve-the-homeless-soup kind of way, if you are afraid of someone because they have skin of a different color.

Or if they are lesbian, gay, or transgender.

I am supposed to love everyone. We are supposed to leave the judgment for Judgement Day. I don't truly know what is in someone's heart until they tell me, and to do that, I'd have to have a relationship with them that includes opening up, sharing, and trust. Faces, attire, hairdos can all hide the true feelings inside a person and show the world only what the person wants you to see. I can dress up fancy to feel fancy, but inside, I may hold hurts, hate, and fear.

The way to accept others is to get to know others and begin to see them as PEOPLE instead of as a stereotype. It's easy to love an imperfect person with feelings and things in common with other people. It's hard to love a religion, a color, or a lifestyle. Those are inanimate things.

Shift your thinking.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

My Fatal Flaw

UPDATE

Hi all. I think it's time for an update. You know if I haven't been blogging, it's because I am so busy.
I am teaching full time, flying by the seat of my pants.
I am parenting with my husband two boys who seem to have forgotten how to behave this month.
I am tutoring 2 hours a week a young man with autism in working independently on tasks and reading comprehension, simple grammar, and math.
I am attending a college class online, reading texts and articles and writing papers and forum posts for class.
And the rest of the time is spent trying to debrief and regain my sanity. I facebook stalk. I watch shows on hulu or netflix. I plan.

This post is about working through something I read in my college class. It was an article about stereotypes, labeling, and harm framed through the lens of story telling. Stories are something I know. Story telling is one of my strengths. I was intrigued and interested.

The premise is that when we tell a story about someone who is unable to tell it themselves, we stick to the truth and find the good inside. When we listen to stories repeated by others about others we listen to the underlying truths and find the good inside. If we propagate rumors and embellish stories until all know them as legends, we spread hurtful lies.

The example is a story where an old woman was said to sleep on a mattress stuffed with money. The simple lie was spread around until one night a band of thieves stole into her house and killed her to rip her mattress open and find nothing but feathers.

Similarly, when we tell stories about the 'dumb', 'gay', 'black', 'white', 'fat', 'redneck' people we know, the simple embellishments and rumors we start become huge stereotypes that separate and define people in other's minds. The author especially wants to focus on the made up diagnosis of mental retardation. "Made up?" you ask. But when arbitrary scales of of IQ numbers were set to justify putting individuals in settings for care whom did not receive care, but abuse, the possibility that they could succeed at any level in society was thrown out the window. Now we view them as outcasts. We put them in special classes in school. We don't hire them. We think they need separate treatment. This is also abuse.

Look at Carly Fleischmann, all those with Downs who get married or run businesses, or workers in your community that seem different somehow but they have a job so they must be able enough. You know what I mean. You do it, too. What's their story?

My assignment was to be creative and write a poem or draw something this article inspired. I was not in a poetry mood. I still am not in a poetry mood. But I was in a painting mood. So I designed this:

This is a partial quote from the article. I like it. You will see that I used it above when describing the article.

I want to do this. I DO do this as much as possible. My fatal flaw is being an optimist. Now you know how to defeat me. :)

Note: Wrote a poem anyway

Stories

We seek the truth

Beyond the lies

See the sparkle 

In someone's eyes

As a new skill is learned

A new task completed

Story finished

Enemy defeated