“It seems to me that more and more we’ve come to expect less and less from each other, and I think that should change.” – Aaron Sorkin
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, I wrote a blog post for my old BlogSpot page. That was primarily for me to get reconnected with my own humanity after that unconscionable tragedy. Nobody should have to see 20 moms and dads bury their 6 and 7 year olds after something so senseless.
Nobody should have to see 20 moms and dads bury their 6 and 7 year olds after something so senseless.
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I was reminded of that post this past weekend after what happened in Charlottesville, VA. Three people were killed and 19 injured as the result of white nationalist protests and counter protests. 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed when someone drove their car into a group of counter protestors. And two Virginia State Troopers (Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper Berke M. M. Bates) were killed in a helicopter crash from patrolling the protests.
That’s all I’m devoting to the facts of the story. That’s not this article. There are countless articles about this. What I wanted to talk about is the state of the human race and the state of being alive.
Whenever a Newtown, Charlottesville, or any countless number of reprehensible stories like this happen, I get present to something every time. It seems like these crimes and tragedies happen as a result of people not looking under the surface of who people are. We see the what and not the who.
We all have perceptions about people. Every day, many times a day.
For example, here’s some of my what:
• I’m a man.
• I’m 40 years old.
• I am white.
• I am left handed.
• I have dark hair.
• I have facial hair.
I could go on. But none of that is who I am.
None of that is real!
I mean, these are all facts. And facts are real things.
But I’m a human being not a human thing.
Racism is never born. Bigotry is never born. An infant isn’t born hating someone because they’re a different skin color or different religion.
Racism and bigotry are two of many things that aren’t real until we put words and language to them. In other words, we don’t learn it until we’re taught by our environment.
Consider this, there are better than 7.5 billion people on the planet.
I’m about to say something that may or may not blow your mind.
Out of all those 7+ billion people, how many of them look the same? Identically?
“What about identical twins?”
Look, two dear Alabama friends of mine are twin sisters. While they look very similar, there are differences between the way Amber and April look.
It seems like these crimes and tragedies happen as a result of people not looking under the surface of who people are. We see the what and not the who.
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They also aren’t identical either, but I digress.
No two people on the planet look exactly the same. Nobody in human history has looked exactly the same.
Now, let’s try something. Let’s cut all 7.5 billion of us open. I’m serious, let’s cut us all open.
Now, let’s all take out our hearts.
We’ll all die, I get it. But roll with me.
Let’s take a young white man from Texas and put his heart on a table. And let’s take an older Muslim woman from Afghanistan and put her heart on the table next to the Texan heart.
Could anyone tell who belonged to which heart?
How about taking out their livers? Their lungs? Their spleens?
Could anyone identify which liver belonged to which human?
The things that unite us are far greater and more important than the things that divide us. And that’s been the story since the beginning of human history!
I could recall many similar stories over the past few years. Newtown, the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the riots in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Dallas, Charlottesville, etc. Any of those incidents could have been prevented if we saw people for who they are instead of what we perceive people to be. If we did that, then the human race would be a lot better off.
I recently saw the horrifying but beautiful film Detroit. It’s a dramatization of the 1967 Detroit Riots. A major part of the film’s story was a dramatization of the Algiers Motel incident. Which, by itself, was a powder keg of anxiety, racial tension, and mistaken identities.
All during that film, I got present to just how much people operate based on what people are instead of who they are.
And it’s a mob mentality, I get it. But really only one character in this story took the time to see anyone for who they are.
I could name so many examples of this from the media, movies, TV, music, literature, what have you. People don’t look for the who.
We are so disconnected from reality, it’s disgusting. We aren’t connecting with our humanity. We aren’t connecting with the reality of humanity.
Appreciating people for their who can be difficult. It can be challenging. Because, simply put, the who isn’t easy.
It can be hard to love someone for the essence of their being, because you actually have to get to know someone. You have to get around looking bad and not looking good.
I still have faith in us, even now more than ever. But if we don’t reshape the conversation about being a human being, we’ll never learn a thing.
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Loving someone for their essential being means knowing them as a human being, and not a human thing.
As renowned spiritual teacher, author, and speaker Marianne Williamson once wrote, “Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn.”
Simply put, we need to reshape the conversation on what it means to be a human being.
And as I wrote in that blog post back in 2012, “I still have faith in the human race. I still have faith that we’ll come through this crisis with a lesson learned. But if we don’t take action and start to help each other and love each other, we’ll never learn a thing.”
I still have faith in us, even now more than ever. But if we don’t reshape the conversation about being a human being, we’ll never learn a thing.
Photo by Amanda Hirsch