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I want to write something about this Country of ours - about how we think we're so special and yet, when you look at it, when you think about it, the people of ANY Country think their country, and their people, are special.
The problem is my ideas, my impressions, are just that. Impressions. Half formed ideas not yet given proper voice, form and structure.
In assessing us and our place and station, it is not my goal to criticize the politics of our country, or the economics of our country, or any other overt facet of our ever so public profile. It is, rather, of our opinion of ourselves, and how that opinion came to be formed, and how that opinion continues to be supported in the face of knowledge and information, which every day mounts in accumulation against that opinion, that I would speak.
And like I said. My ideas are not yet fully formed, and yet they ARE formed enough to begin to bother me, to give me unease, and to cause me to sit here and try to tell you what's on my mind. Or, at least, give you a hint. As I have only a hint.
I am not the only one bothered by this. Look at all the protesters all across the Country. They are bothered, too. They don't know it, but collectively they are beginning to voice all the many things which have been on my mind for a long time.
I have distilled my discontent down to what I consider the basic and underlying thing that drives all the other things they protest about. At the very highest levels: We have lost our National Humility; we have lost sight of "Do Unto Others"; we have lost sight of "Love Thy Neighbor"; we don't remember, any longer, what it's supposed to mean to be an American; we've fallen in love with our own ideas and have no respect for the ideas of others.
I am divided - part of me wants to speak against all the things that have given rise to the protests, and part of me wants to look at the larger view - to avoid the shouting and placard waving, and give voice to an IDEA - a single idea that encapsulates the underlying causes of all our problems. But that idea will not crystallize, yet. That idea refuses to accept a name. But it will.
It's coming. Soon, I hope.
Ndinombethe.
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5 comments:
I understand what you are saying here... especially about 'unformed thoughts'...
I have purposely avoided talking about the political situation (too much) because I can only hold so much in my my at one time... and that is precisely what 'those who sit above in shadow' counts upon... that the masses are too busy with the incessant 'drama' of living and the agendas of those who see power over men for its own sake, and not the improving of life...
...dag, I didn't want to get this far into it... but it is a slippery rabbit hole... you may be only peeking in, but no matter how balanced you are, you lose your purchase and down you go...
Ah yes. You're having an unformed thought day. I get that. I'm usually unformed. That's why I often resort to mild humor. It's easier than trying to get across my deeper thoughts when they aren't fully formed.
I'm still in 'Wait and see' mode... It's a weird world, these days.
Ah, don't get me started...
And, yes, we are all the center of our own universe.
That central idea has to be that we are all one, that the need of any one of us is important to the rest of us, that until we all have clean air, water, shelter, food and health care, our work is not done. And that we must address the common good no matter who gets the credit.
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