WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO US?

 

This may be a bit of a long read, but I hope those who come across it will read to the end and ponder this all important message.

I awoke this morning with sweet memories of the past, I'm not sure what triggered those memories but they played out across the screen of my mind as I readied myself for the day. Memories of the early 1990s, when I worked a simple retail job in the ShopRite supermarket on Dolson Avenue, in Middletown New York. I was the maintenance man and it was my job to make sure the store was clean and in basic working order for the customers.

I remember all of us who worked there, coworkers and friends who laughed, joked and shared stories during our work hours together. I remember the community that shopped there, black, white, Hispanic, Jewish and a host of other nationalities. During the holiday time people shared how they spent this special time of year whether they celebrated Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or some other dearly held tradition that meant something to them. No one criticized, no one put anyone else down or criticized their tradition. We were a community and we acted like it.

I remember helping some of the elderly customers, (and admittedly some of the cute and friendly female customers, 😁) out to their cars with their brimming carts of groceries. We all knew each other and we were always happy to see a familiar face even if that familiar face just stopped into the store once a week for their weekly grocery shopping. It was a different world. The amount of warm wishes, prayers for the community and secretly held aspirations for the new year that was inevitably coming were many in the old familiar aisles of the supermarket. It didn't matter whether we were Christian, Muslim, Jewish or atheist. It didn't matter if we were Democrat or Republican. It didn't matter if we had a different skin color or talked with a thick accent. We were all people who seemed to meet one another on a common ground. No one asked questions and no one persecuted anyone else. It was a time probably taken for granted by most of us and almost seems unreal in the world we live in today.

For now, many of us hate our neighbors and want to do them harm if they are from a different culture or have a different skin tone. We mock and spew words of venom towards those who celebrate traditions that are different from ours. We've divided ourselves into black, white, yellow, red and dark.We've divided ourselves into groups that are Christian and non-Christian. We've divided ourselves into left and right, staunch Republican or Democrat. We see people hating and hurting one another because of political differences. People on social media wishing death and execution on those who do not agree with them religiously or politically. Even some of the people I knew back in those simpler days, have taken on this darkness, this vitriol and this spirit of hatred and violence. Friends have abandoned one another and families have been split apart over these heinous divisions. Yet once upon a time, family and friendships meant everything even if our family and friends were not perfect. It makes me wonder, is this who we always were or is it something we have become because somehow we have all been put under some kind of hypnotic spell that robbed us of our humanity and common decency? Were we just waiting for the opportunity to hate our neighbors and become so shallow of thought and emotion that we could just walk away from our families and friends as if they were nothing or nobody?

Honestly, I do not believe this is who we always were, at least not most of us. I think we are like the frog in boiling water who doesn't realize he's boiling until it's too late. We have let certain leaders, both religious and political run away with our minds and our values. And there's not one man or one political group that is going to get all of that back for us. We, as individuals have to make the decision to be better. Organized religion will not do it for us because most religious leaders are spewing their messages from the pulpit yet living like the worst of us behind closed doors. Again, it is we as individuals who have to make the decision to be better. There is no one, no party or organization that is going to hand us back our humanity and our sense of community. That is something we do on our own. And we are either those people who love our neighbors as ourselves or we are not. Since when did we ever let the people who are charlatans, liars and selfish opportunists tell us who to be and who to hate? Since when did we check our minds at the door and go with whatever whims these divisive personalities cast into our society? I remember in those simpler days, when no one fully trusted the big religious leaders or politicians. We all had that knowing smile and understood that those people were not really for us, they were for themselves. But now we follow those same dishonest leaders like pied pipers, leading us like rats to drown in the depths of the ocean. Is this who we really want to be, is this who we want to become and how we want to be remembered? Whatever happened to us?