“Our lives begin to end, the day we become silent about things that matter.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
~Martin Luther King
And here we are close to fifty years later, a nation that continues to spend more on war than on social uplift. Back then, it was Vietnam and today our money is spent on spilling blood in the Middle East, all in the name of Peace. And even in the streets of our cities and towns, war rages. Dr. King called the riots back in the sixties, “the language of the unheard” the festering anger that comes from the frustration of social injustice and discord.
We don’t have too many riots anymore, partly because most of the young people are too drugged by our medical community that is encouraged by our educational system that does not understand their hyper thinking, but we do have gangs, which I believe are another generation of the “unheard” Dr. King described so many years ago.
Everyone shutters at the thought of a gang, but what are countries? Both gangs and nations all have rigid beliefs and “tattoos” (flags and uniforms) and they all kill for what they believe in. I am surely not saying that the tactics used by gangs is socially uplifting, but private warring, in my opinion, is not any worse then our own government – the biggest difference is our government is using our money to do so which pays for our leaders that mostly talk over the issues and dance around the truth. When was the last time a gang asked for a donation? Please do not for a second think I am defending any of it. But do not look at society blindly.
I have commented recently, that we have no social leaders anymore like Dr. King, but I have recently come to realize, for the first time in a very long time or perhaps ever in the history of our recorded world, has there been a movement without a leader. There is a shift going on, a shift that began back in the 50’s – when we began to stir and wake from our sleepy Leave it to Beaver American Dream. That period of time in the 1950’s was nearing the end of an era and was entering into the new and current millennium.
It birthed a generation that began to rebel against that idea of perfectionism, an idea that did not – and cannot exist. It spawned a generation of flower children that rejected the idea of monogamy and family and immersed itself in free love, free thought and a lot of drugs, and where are they now? Most can be found working in corporate America.
Much has changed since we lost Dr. King. But his prophecies of our nations character still haunt us. He aroused in many of us the desire for peace and freedom that some thought they had, but as Dr. King pointed out, unless all men are free, no one is truly free. The words of our enemies are not as deafening as the silence of our friends. We can no longer ignore the issues of the earth and her people. MLK used a term called “non violent direct action” a term that should be applied to our every day lives. When will we learn that we simply need not accept what is not right. As I wrote in my article “Loosen Your Grip, it saddens me to think many of us are afraid to loosen our grip and be who we truly are, even for something as trivial as someone’s opinion of us. Do you think Dr. King stopped to think if he was insulting someone who was not ready to be fully alive and thought filled? Not only was he aware he angered others, he allowed himself to be hated in the name of Love. This brilliant leader lit the way for many and we can only hope that we are still asleep in his dream, and that we will soon wake up in a world of brotherhood and freedom. Don’t live a silent life – resist wrongdoing with grace and know deep in your soul, that having nothing you would die for is a life not fit to live. “An individual has not started living, until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
With all of our new years resolutions – let us not forget we are all family and resolve to make the world – our community – someone else’s life a little better. This is still the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. let us all wake from it and realize we are all one.
