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The apostle Paul encouraged his followers to put away childish things. Many today would encourage the American population to do the same. Self-centeredness and the need for revenge and payback, these are some of the childish things that have been driving our population. As I've written before in this blog, there is more that we share in common than the differences we often focus on.
We are the American people. Our fate is a common one. Self-interest is positive up to a point. But we have now reached that point. In fact we have exceeded it. The values that we need to be acting on now are not fear and self-interest but empathy, truth, and a desire for unity. As John Lewis once said, democracy is not a state; it is an action.
Now is a time for action. We need to act in terms of our values. We need to focus on unifying, not dividing. We need to give each other a chance. Those who disagree with us may be our opponents, not our enemies. We need to stop demonizing the others. Division is a choice, but so is cooperation. If we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate.
As President Biden said, we are engaged in a battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses. We are a good people. If we work together we can do almost anything. We have proved that many times before, but we need to have faith in ourselves and in each other. We do not want to allow the darkest impulses such as fear, tribalism, and self-interest to control our thinking and our behavior. This is a time for resilience. We need to be flexible. We need to cooperate and communicate with others. And not just with the others who believe what we believe.
As I said before, we need to act on our values not our fears. We need to gain control over the strong emotions that we have at this point, fear being one of these and anger being another. We need to realize that the challenges we face right now are not permanent ones and they do not have to be pervasive ones. They do not have to affect every aspect of our life. They do not have to control our lives.
Blaming is a waste of time. We need to hold ourselves and others accountable, but not engage in blaming. We need to take care of ourselves to a point, but we also need to take care of others and be concerned about their fate, since their fate determines our fate.
And last of all, we need to keep some sense of humor. God knows we need it now perhaps more than ever. Again, together we can do almost anything. Divided we cannot.
