My mind is racing all over the place these days. I’m one of those people who reads several books at once and spends a great deal of time perusing articles that catch my attentions from magazines and newspapers. I read posts on Facebook and X while also playing the Spelling Bee and Wordle games in the New York Times. I’m addicted to documentaries and stories related to history and current events. There’s so much going on right now that my brain is abuzz with thoughts, concerns and even a kind of over active empathy. Somehow today I am finding it difficult to focus on one thing to write about because I am so over stimulated. 

I just read a shocking piece in The Atlantic about a Filipino family that kept a woman named Lola bound to them without pay for most of her life. Shockingly Lola was selected to care for the child of a wealthy and powerful man while he was working away from home. When the little girl grew into an adult woman the father “gave” her Lola as a gift. From that moment forward Lola was a kind of unpaid “slave” who cooked, cleaned. did laundry and cared for the family children for many decades without ever being paid a dime. Her only payment was a place to sleep and remnants of food along with constant criticism and punishment when she displeased her keepers. It was not until Lola was in her seventies that one of the men she had raised helped her to reunite with her sister sixty years after she had been conscripted. 

I began to wonder how many such stories are still playing out all over the world. How many poor people with little education are being used by wealthy individuals for their labor with little or no compensation? I find it difficult to imagine how anyone in this day and age is unable to comprehend how wrong such behavior actually is and yet I see and hear actions and commentaries that tell me how people are constantly being judged as inferior and worthy of contempt. I really can’t put my head around the kind of thinking that views our fellow brothers and sisters of the world as somehow being less than to the rest of us.  

I suppose that there have been and will always be individuals who think that they are more worthy of respect. The “isms” of society have always been around in one form or another and continue to flourish even as we should all be better educated and more understanding. I suppose that even I am sometimes too quick to judge the actions or comments of people without asking why they may seem to be so toxic. I should be asking what has happened in their lives to make them so angry rather than instantly disdaining their ignorance. When I do that I am as bad as they seem to be. 

These days the warring in Israel and Gaza is very much on my mind. I do not know of anyone in my family who is a practicing Jew, but my ancestry can be traced back to Jewish men and women in the long ago. I have always felt a kind of affinity to the Jewish people. I have cried over their centuries long mistreatment. I would adamantly defend them in most cases but I also have been aching over the situation of the Palestinian people in Gaza. It really is possible to be for both countries at the same time. The incident of the October attack on Israel was horrific but the present response that has killed over thirty thousand Palestinian citizens, destroyed homes, hospitals and schools is not proportional. I find myself grieving for both countries and realizing that the people there are actually victims of politicians who refuse to give in to one another. Most people anywhere would prefer to find ways to live in peace. 

My heart is crushed by man’s inhumanity to man. It seems so simple to always work to get along and yet the arc of history shows us that we humans find ways to hurt each other again and again. What is the source of such evil in our hearts? Why are we so unwilling to work together to share and respect? Why do we not listen to one another but instead grow angry when people try to protest injustice? Why are we so quick to arrest those who want us to see differing points of view? Why have we always had to turn to martyrs like Jesus,  Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela before we do the right thing? Why are we constantly arguing about the worth of other people?

I know that I am imperfect. I not only don’t have all the answers but sometimes I think I have no answers. Nonetheless I am willing to make sacrifices for the good of people who only want the same opportunities and good fortune that I already have. Every human longs to be free and secure. Nobody wants war or mistreatment and yet we have evil doers who shatter the peace of people all over the world. How can we not speak out to help the innocents who are being killed and misused simply because it may be uncomfortable for us to do so? Why can’t we stop to ask the person stealing across our borders why they have risked everything to do so? Why can’t we listen to students protesting the war in Israel and Gaza and find out to what they have to say without drowning them out with arguments? Why can’t we understand that the very existence of our own country was rooted in the economics of slavery and attitudes that still subject Black citizens to injustice? We should be actively working to understand rather than filling the air with disagreements and attacks. Truths are more often than not difficult to hear, but hear them we must! We only delude ourselves and make matters worse when we deny the complexities of living together. Nothing is simple and never has been. We have work to do. We should not depend on another great martyr coming along to repair our problems. Each of us has a responsibility to end the debates and use diplomacy to truly repair the brokeness.