We humans seem to naturally gather together in groups. Sometimes we are part of harmless cliques or clubs. Often we belong to a particular race or ethnicity. As long as we respect one another’s differences and don’t devolve into mistrust or envy of the other alliances we manage to live in harmony but the history of the world all too often demonstrates a tendency for people to choose up sides with disastrous consequences.
My grandparents came from a part of eastern Europe with a tribal mentality. The people there have squabbled with one another for centuries. The Austro-Hungarian empire was an attempt to forcefully unite a disparate group of people who for the most part despised one another. Treaties with this country and that led to full blown war when the heir to the throne was assassinated. World War I and the tragedy that it spawned came from the inability of the many ethnicities to find ways to share limited resources and land. The horror of that conflict was magnified a couple of decades later when Adolf Hitler went so far as to attempt to create a so called master race by ridding his country of all those considered to be undesirable.
Most of the civil wars and disagreements in the world today are between different religious sects, political philosophies, and tribes. From the South Sudan to Syria the human suffering that we see derives from groups who can’t get along. There are Suni Muslims fighting Shia Muslims and everyone in the Middle East seems to hate the Kurds and the Jews. Here at home we are becoming increasingly divided by political and religious philosophies. It’s not healthy. We don’t want to become Balkanized like the place from whence my grandfather fled over a hundred years ago.
We all have a sense of pride in who we are. I am first and foremost a human being from the United States of America. I am also a native Texan. My DNA marks me as mostly British and Eastern European. I am a Catholic but that same DNA indicates that my chromosomes show traces of European Jew. I am a unique combination derived from thousands of years of movements across continents and oceans. Today I humbly stand as someone who is just me, no better nor worse than anyone else. Essentially my only desire is to live in harmony and be allowed to have my own points of view.
I once worked with a brilliant historian. She held advanced degrees from the University of Houston and Rice University. She herself had been a war orphan from Austria who was sent to a family in the United States. She had a particular interest in the European alliances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She also had a German car that often broke down so she needed rides home from time to time. Since her neighborhood was on the way to mine I usually offered to give her a lift. My motives didn’t always derive from generosity for I was fascinated by the conversations that I had with her. I used any excuse to hear her talk about the similarities that she saw between the Balkan states of Europe and the way she saw our own citizenry splintering into interest, religious and ethnic groups. She worried that we might one day be at one another’s throats and warned that we needed to find ways to resolve our differences or pay the consequences.
The age old argument is whether our American society should be a melting pot or a tossed salad. For years coming to the United States meant embracing the language, the culture and the beliefs. National pride meant loving America unconditionally. That was the melting pot. We set aside our differences and became as one. The problem is that such an idea was only minimally true. My own mother was taunted for being a Catholic and bearing the appearance of a foreigner. We all know that the Black citizens among us still struggle to be accepted as equals. There are those who would judge an individual based on color of skin, religion or language. Since we all like to celebrate our ancestry it seems more fitting to speak of being a gloriously beautiful salad in which each individual part mixes together to create a feast for the eyes and the palate. Such a theory only works if we agree to honor and respect one another and to share in a spirit of partnership. If we begin vying for power and resources the system begins to break down.
I believe in our capitalist republic. I think that it gives each of us the best opportunity to make something of ourselves but we have to be honest when it isn’t working as well as it should. We’ve often disagreed with one another on how to fix problems but the important thing is that we try. Of late we seem more inclined to turn our backs on anyone with whom we differ. Rather than attempting to find neutral ground we insult and push back on one another. Name calling has become a national pastime. As my old friend warned we are becoming increasingly divided and angry. Sadly I don’t believe that our tendencies will come to any good. I truly worry when I hear people say that if things don’t go their way they will move from the country rather than staying to work together. It is a sure sign that we are in grave danger of warring rather than finding solutions.
We certainly have our share of troublemakers all around us. They come from virtually every splinter group. They are rabble rousers who take delight in watching us fight among one another. Just as Osama Bin Laden and Nikita Khrushchev predicted we are in danger of being defeated from within. There are many people in the world who will celebrate if we fall. They are playing psychological games to make us feel unsafe. It is up to us to be better than they think we will.
We can all have good lives and still have plenty to share with others. We don’t have to fight unnecessary battles or follow those who would play on our fears. I would hate to think that my grandparents sailed all the way across the ocean to begin a new life here in the United States only to have this country end up much like the one that they left. We all love our children. We all want a bright future for them. It’s time that we began to work on accomplishing that without bashing those whose ideas differ from ours. We belong to the same tribe. It’s called mankind and underneath the superficialities that seem to define us is exactly the same flesh and blood.
Literature is filled with words from wise men admonishing adults, especially parents, to always remember that children will often do what they see, not what they are told. In other words our kids are always watching us to determine if we practice what we preach. They may not yet know the word for hypocrisy or be able to explain its meaning but they are quite bright at detecting when we are disingenuous. Our youngsters are way more observant than we sometimes think which makes me rather concerned about our presidential candidates. I wonder what our young ones, especially our teenagers are thinking about now when two such terribly flawed individuals are vying for the highest office in the land. 
Last school year one of my grandson’s called me using Skype so that I might help him with his seventh grade math homework. It was an unusual request from him because he is generally quite mathematically inclined and is even taking Algebra I this year in the eighth grade. I learned that he had a long term substitute teacher who wasn’t especially equipped to teach math and so he was not grasping concepts during class the way he normally does. In addition the homework assignment didn’t appear to match the information that he had been given during regular school hours. Even worse was the fact that it was over four pages long with a total of about eighty problems. He caught on quickly and managed to complete the assignment with little help from me but it took well over two hours and he was almost falling asleep as we worked to beat the clock. I suspected that perhaps he had been given the worksheets earlier in the week and simply chose to get them completed just before they were due but he insisted that it was a one night deal. Since he is generally quite honest I had to believe that the situation was one of those travesties that students must sometimes endure. 
It only took a split second on that September day for everything to change. The sky was blue. It was one of those seemingly perfect mornings when we all went about our business with a little more spring in our steps. Who could be unhappy with the sun shining so magnificently and the weather showing the promise of cooler days ahead? When we saw that plane heading toward a building in the middle of New York City it didn’t make sense. We wondered if the pilot was lost, sick, having a heart attack. Once the plane hit without any attempt to adjust course a sickening feeling of horror began to slowly overtake us. By the time a second plane flew straight through the other tower, a third slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania our national innocence had been shattered. While we have been attempting to deal with the aftermath of what happened fifteen years ago an entire generation of children has grown up under the specter of terror. September 11, 2001, was a purposeful attack on our psyches and the years have not yet healed us. 
Another Labor Day has come and gone and I find myself once again going, “Meh!” I’ve never liked Labor Day. Like Pavlov’s dog I instinctively react negatively to the mere mention of it. I’ve always thought that it is misplaced on the annual calendar, coming as it does at the end of the summer. Instead of invoking a sense of celebration like other national holidays it seems to be an ill advised attempt to simply throw in one more long weekend before the days grow short and the nights long. I’ve always thought that it might be more appreciated if it were scheduled for March or April when there is often a dearth of downtime for those who work. Since I’ve been ruled by the school calendar for the majority of my life Labor Day signals an end to fun in my mind, not a reason to be happy.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 