Seven Days

Dear Citizens of the World:

The past couple weeks have been a lot. Really.

I’m not here to shake a finger in your face and tsk-tsk you, but geez, folks, I need air. AIR.

Can we please have seven straight days of no mass shootings, no public executions, no drone strikes and no conversations dominated by deafness and shouting?

Please. It’s just. Seven. Days.

We don’t have to hold hands and sing Kum-ba-yah. We don’t have to like the same music or even pray to the same God. Really we don’t.

But can we please see each other as human beings?

If we can do that, just think of the possibilities:

Maybe the hungry might not be so hungry for a week because we’ll feed them; and we'll feed them because we’ll see them as starving human beings instead of The Hungry.

Maybe we’ll rally around the homeless, give them shelter, and help them reclaim their God-given dignity because we'll see them as human beings who are homeless instead of seeing them as The Homeless.

Or, maybe our words and actions will finally spring from a font of understanding that we are all traveling a common journey as human beings, instead of our doings and sayings being rooted in fears, biases and insecurities.

Maybe.

Maybe it could happen.

Then again, maybe it won’t happen. Not even for seven days.

But that won’t stop me from dreaming about it.

Sincerely,

je suis epuise’

(translated: I Am Exhausted)

Photo credit: Begin with Yes