Our Lack of Action

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building understanding, community, Dolores Huertas, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, hope, love, respect, Stephen Swhartz, violence

Dear readers, all of us have tried to become better persons during our lives.

We live in a society where violence is present from the cartoons are children see to the violent crimes we get to witness through social media, that make you wonder where is our world heading?

It’s easy to understand how easily our values can succumb in these scenarios.

We flip the pancake, as so to say, to accommodate our feelings in a way that our actions are justified.  Or better said “our lack of action”.  Specially when we agree with this anarchic way of life by remaining bystanders and not trying to do anything about it.

We don’t have to become Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, or Dolores Huertas to do something, the only thing that we need to do is take action in one of the simplest ways, educate ourselves first and then share what we have learned with others.  To counteract ignorance helping others see things differently.

via morguefile

We are bombarded with hatred, criticism, bullying, and many of the vices of humanity.  It’s easier to destroy than to build  bridges of communications  on the grounds of understanding and respect. This way we are dismantling violence one step at at time.

Like Stephen Shwartz  wrote,  “hope is frail, but very hard to kill” in the lyrics of the song When You Believe.  I want to hold on to that hope to believe in humanity and the choice we have to become better persons.

We can all attempt to construct a better world for ourselves and  future generations to come, specially if we teach by practice one of the basic values of human race, RESPECT.

Just a little something to think about.

See you next time around, and thanks for stopping by.

Troubles Melt Like Lemondrops

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believing, community, dreams, Happiness, hatred, hope, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, racism, The Walking Dead, Trump, violence

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything.

To an extent it’s because I’ve become trapped in my own thoughts, most not worth writing about.

Our world is in turmoil since November 4th and the easiest way out would be blaming Trump and moving on.  However, if I’m going to honest it’s not about Trump or anybody else, it’s about me because  I am part of a society that is liable for placing Trump where he is right now.

The funny part is that as an American citizen I can’t vote for president unless I’m living in one the continental states, however I am affected directly by the President’s policies.

Policies that will make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

Basically because  we’ve forgotten to give each other hope in a recession because of our egocentricity,  and have been held prisoners  by a rhetoric delivered with a 5th grader’s vocabulary. And all of a sudden we think that we can make America great with hatred and escalated verbal and physical violence.

Not taking into notice that America can be built greater if we build communities where people can come together and find solutions to the problems we face together regardless of the differences we have.

Most of the time life is hard for so many reasons and we just forget to hope and believe.  Which is by the way ironically is one of the things I think I am, a believer.

Life presents us with so many horrible situations where we have to make a stand or just simply walk away.  The coward in us wants to walk away and be settled in a status quo that most of the time will lead us to live half alive and half dead.  Probably the people who created The Walking Dead with its one line plot feed upon people like me or maybe you.

The dreamers in all of us wish that our problems would just melt away like lemon drops, but its not that simple.  Caring for others is hard enough, imagine if we tried to be changers in a society that  is more and more about the individual and less and less of our problems as a community or country.

Tonight as I searched for songs for a conversational English course that I’m teaching,  I came across one of my favorite songs that transported me back to 6th grade and back to my dreams of finding a place of happiness somewhere over the rainbow.

I felt moved as I listened to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole sing about hope and happiness, and felt such a coward for not standing up to life’s endless situations.

My husband is about to loose his job because of a partial close of a pharmaceutical company, hence it’s no secret that we are all touched by the ups and downs of an uncertain economy.  However, all of us need to hold on to believing that in someway or form are dreams may come true if we are brave enough to believe.

And that my dear readers may sound to many as something delusional to an extent, but nevertheless don’t underestimate the power of  hope.

Hope is the engine of our lives, making us stand stronger in the face of adversity and when the day comes to an end and we welcome the night expecting something good to happen the next day with the rise of the sun.

May we all rest tonight expecting a brighter and better day tomorrow. Life is waiting for us whenever we’re ready to embrace it.

See you around the corner.

The Paths Of Our Spirit

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choices, Fergunson, Life, paths, violence

I’ve heard many times of life’s roads and the choices we make as we walk through them.

For some these roads are trails, for others they are highways. None the less, all of them are paths.

These are the paths of our spirit.

via morguefile

 

In occasions we choose good over bad, in others bad over good.  The hard part of bad over good is that we don’t get a chance to fix whatever it is we did wrong and then need to learn to live with regret, remorse or any other thing you want to call it.

A lesson I’ve learned is,  the bigger the mistake, the heavier the remorse.

Our paths bring  tough and  great times, as they come along we can’t hang on to neither for more than a moment in time. They come and go and nothing we can do will stop this reality from happening.

Every experience we get to live are lessons learned.  Teachers are meant to be facilitators in the learning process.  They engage us and help us discover what we want to learn.

Jesus often asked questions to his disciples, guiding them to discover the world that surrounded them and the lessons that were pertinent to them.

I love this way of teaching and learning.

Questions should be a part of our being.  They should be the ones guiding us through our paths.  Helping us discover where, when and how we need to make our way in the world.

Writing is my learning path, it’s my outlet in this process, it  gives me the opportunity to voice my questions.  It has  helped me see clearly who and where I stand on the important issues.

Not having questions in our lives, but instead tons of information coming in without pondering about any of it is dangerous because we surrender to others are learning paths  and usually  make the wrong turn.

It’s not about being told what to do, or how to think.  It’s about taking in all that surrounds us and making the right choices.  When situations like the ones going on in Fergunson play it’s important to stop and think,

‘Hey, what was going on in the head of the police officer that killed this young man?”

He took a turn in his path and he has to live with whatever the choice he made in his moment in time. I’m not judging or trying to answer his motivation, but learn something from it. Each story has two sides and I’m not a fan and taking stand on either one of them.  Basically because I constantly remind myself,

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

We’re in no place to judge or criticize others.  It’s best to let us figure out what’s happening answering the questions in our heads.  I’m sure everyone has them, the difference is that some choose to answer and other do not want to deal with that.

Our paths are intertwined with each other.  Some call it destiny, others prefer not to.  I’m a strong believer that we need to develop a keen sense of everyone and everything that surrounds us because we’re bound to miss something important if we don’t.

So you see, my dear friends, it’s all about listening to the questions in our heads and tuning our spirit to walk on the right paths.  Pleading to whatever it is you or myself believe in to guide us through our ways.

And remember never stop believing in yourself or the good of life.

“Hasta la próxima.”