Legacy of Thanks.
There is no one in this world who has not and does not struggle in some way to make it through every day, no one. We struggle to find a place we can have a measure of happiness in our lives, struggle to reach a better place for ourselves and our loved ones. We move forward, pushing against the things that try to hold us back, without knowing what they are holding us back from or how they even got there. Somehow, amid a sea of struggling souls, we find ourselves feeling alone, but nothing could be further from the truth. We make our way, each of us living now, just as those who came before us did, and just as those who will follow us shall in their own time. We are the inheritors, the bearers of a torch lit long ago, and the keepers of that flame for the future.Each of us struggles against the world, because it is not how we know in our hearts that it should be. Children do not grow up in a garden of possibilities, nurtured by communities, educated in their potential or even allowed to find happiness. They are placed in boxes, separated by lines, just as the adults who tend to them were, and so the lie of being alone continues, despite the best efforts and intentions of those who precede them. As adults and inheritors of the responsibility to tend the ground for that garden, it is our responsibility to till,water and fertilize it, not to leech the water and mineral for our own ends. Somewhere along the way, that purpose was lost, and now we find that community spirit is drying up, no longer can we turn to a neighbor for help when we need it, and no longer can we rely on even those we have helped in the past when our time comes to need aid.
We have allowed the wool, even accepted it because we were told it was important, to be pulled over our eyes. We allow and accept our own ignorances to cause us to remain separate from the hands that might well save our lives someday, the hearts we may well love with and even plant a garden with, because somehow we came to believe in another lie. Each lie we are led to believe, shaped and built upon those that preceded the new one, makes one more wall between ourselves and those around us. The last century of human history saw horrors the following generations cannot comprehend, but now bear the legacy of. The last century saw the death of the belief in liberty, the fall of freedom and the end of community, and now we have nothing to prove to ourselves that we are not alone. There are monsters everywhere. The end is always near, and there is a murderer in every home. No one is responsible, because everyone is, and it is always someone else's job to fight for your privileged existence. The voice of resistance to these changes has grown quieter over the years, until what used to be thunderous booming voices proclaiming unity and freedom for all, now only cheer when they are beaten less every day compared to the day before. Somewhere along the way, we have been broken like a rebellious mare on a ranch, and we have accepted every link in the chain that now binds us from reaching out to one another, and we have been pacified by the thought that our cries have been heard, but being heard does not bring change.
There was a time, not that long ago, when the injustice and inequity of life was more than sufficient reason to rise up and resist. There is no one in this world who comes from a lineage that has not struggled in their own time, fought against what should not be, and win or lose fought that battle with every fiber in their being because something mattered to them more than today, because something held more value than even their own lives. In this country, in the last century, we sent our best and brightest to far distant shores, and because they believed in the spirit of what we stand for they died there, or came home broken and changed, but nothing could change their pride in having fought for something more important. Even in strange lands, with no way to survive without the others we sent with them, they fought on, and on and on. Decades between wars have grown less frequent, where they might have been half a century between major wars, we now fight over everything and anything. This is not the legacy left to us by our ancestors, it is not the legacy given as a gift paid for with blood by our fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers. It is the legacy of the lie that we are alone, that we are different and that we are not united.
There are a thousand easy justifications that satisfy the need to explain why you don't do what you know you should. We are all busy people, we are all working hard, we are all struggling to survive, we are all crying to be free and desperate to not be alone anymore. The history of that struggle is long, marked with a few brave souls who refused to submit and refused to be silent. In my own life, my family history is marked by brave voices who cried out against the injustice of inequity, the sin of the falsely privileged few, or the fallacy of being alone. I count among that list others, not born of my bloodline, but the rare few who fought along someone because it was right and not because it was personally affecting. Some call them traitors, rebels, or heretics, I call them family because they fought for me and what I believe in my heart. I count as kin brave souls, quiet resisters and screaming angels who bellow their rage at the world in the name of equality and justice for all. I call sister, Rosa Parks, who refused to move when the world wrongly called her less than equal. I call brother and sister each and every person who fought , bled and sang at Christopher street in NYC in 1969, and am proud to inherit their legacy of freedom. I count every woman who dared to say she was just as good as a man and had the right to speak her mind as family. I count as family every single person who has died for the freedoms we have been given.
If you were to do the same, count everyone who has struggled for you as family, where does the feeling of being alone go? Does it go quietly out the back door, like a thief in the night as it should? In the face of a family more massive than we can even envision, how can it be we are still alone? Are we not the ones they fought for? Are we not the dream they bled and died for? Are we not the inheritors of that torch, and given with it the duty to lift it high for others to see? Should we not be proud of that familial legacy bequested to us as their next of kin? How can it be that we are alone in our struggle, when there is a line of people who preceded us, shouting their encouragement, beaming their pride at us over our accomplishments and the very fact that we exist is the only reward they sought. Should we not raise our own torches a little higher to honor and give thanks the family who floated over oceans to be here, many falling to illness along the route here, who then turn around and bled even on their own native soils, to fight for the dream of what we would be? Should we give any less thanks to every single person who endured the extreme hardships of standing up and speaking out, so that we could hold the person we love, raise the children we have to be better, and live our lives with a degree of equality and freedom they never had? Their legacy is not an empty one, but one filled with hope, pride and dreams. We are that dream they died defending, we are the source of their pride and their dearest hopes. We are the inheritors of their life and their work to make ours a future worthy of being proud of.
The truth is that we are not alone, we have never been alone, because people have come before us, and their legacy lives on in us. We live lives they could only dream of, from sitting at the front of the bus, casting a vote, or holding the hand of someone we love, and that potential life was what they put theirs aside for. It has always been easier to accept a place in the machine, allow the wool to slide easily over our eyes, and accept our isolation than to stand up, be ourselves, be proud and resist the deceptively seductive belief that we are alone because we are 'special'. We ARE special, but not because we are different from anyone else, but because we are different from EVERYONE else because there has never been another like us nor will there be again. There will never be a 'better' time to stand up, never be a time when it is 'convenient' to help someone whose voice may not be heard, and there will never be another chance to live up to the legacy of those who died for you. I bear a torch for those who have come before me, i bear it in my heart, and that fire helps me stand alone, speak loudly when no one is willing to listen, and to say the things that people don't want to hear because it threatens that comfortable isolation and privileged life. The flame that burns is the fire of heresy, rebellion and treason, but it is also the fire of pride, patriotism and faith, because i believe in what old pieces of paper say, that all of us are equal and have an irrefutable right to seek our own happiness. I do not carry that torch to satisfy any personal need, i carry it to give thanks to those who passed it to me when my lap of the race began and to honor their sacrifice.
Too often we let shortsightedness limit our ability to be thankful to those who have graced our lives, and forget too easily those who came before us. We are not expected to be proud of everything they did in their lives, but we have a duty to continue that struggle so long as what they fought for remains out of reach for our children. While there is still injustice, we must accept the blow of the baton, the shaming of those without the courage to stand or speak even when they feel the same, and we must accept being alone and we must find the strength to do those things by knowing we are never alone. Every time we raise our voices for those who cannot speak, they are with us in spirit even when they are forced to fight against us. Every time we use our inheritance to improve the lives around us, we bring the world one step closer to that dream that so many have died for. So when it comes time to think of what we have to be thankful for, honor those who struggled for us to have things to be thankful for by giving others something else THEY will be thankful for when their time comes. Build a legacy worthy of pride for our children and their children. Even if our sacrifices are never seen or known, they will be felt, because they will be one lap closer to reaching our goal, a place where the light of Liberty, Equality, Truth and Justice shine for us all in equal measure and where we stand united as one people, the human race.
We have allowed the wool, even accepted it because we were told it was important, to be pulled over our eyes. We allow and accept our own ignorances to cause us to remain separate from the hands that might well save our lives someday, the hearts we may well love with and even plant a garden with, because somehow we came to believe in another lie. Each lie we are led to believe, shaped and built upon those that preceded the new one, makes one more wall between ourselves and those around us. The last century of human history saw horrors the following generations cannot comprehend, but now bear the legacy of. The last century saw the death of the belief in liberty, the fall of freedom and the end of community, and now we have nothing to prove to ourselves that we are not alone. There are monsters everywhere. The end is always near, and there is a murderer in every home. No one is responsible, because everyone is, and it is always someone else's job to fight for your privileged existence. The voice of resistance to these changes has grown quieter over the years, until what used to be thunderous booming voices proclaiming unity and freedom for all, now only cheer when they are beaten less every day compared to the day before. Somewhere along the way, we have been broken like a rebellious mare on a ranch, and we have accepted every link in the chain that now binds us from reaching out to one another, and we have been pacified by the thought that our cries have been heard, but being heard does not bring change.
There was a time, not that long ago, when the injustice and inequity of life was more than sufficient reason to rise up and resist. There is no one in this world who comes from a lineage that has not struggled in their own time, fought against what should not be, and win or lose fought that battle with every fiber in their being because something mattered to them more than today, because something held more value than even their own lives. In this country, in the last century, we sent our best and brightest to far distant shores, and because they believed in the spirit of what we stand for they died there, or came home broken and changed, but nothing could change their pride in having fought for something more important. Even in strange lands, with no way to survive without the others we sent with them, they fought on, and on and on. Decades between wars have grown less frequent, where they might have been half a century between major wars, we now fight over everything and anything. This is not the legacy left to us by our ancestors, it is not the legacy given as a gift paid for with blood by our fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers. It is the legacy of the lie that we are alone, that we are different and that we are not united.
There are a thousand easy justifications that satisfy the need to explain why you don't do what you know you should. We are all busy people, we are all working hard, we are all struggling to survive, we are all crying to be free and desperate to not be alone anymore. The history of that struggle is long, marked with a few brave souls who refused to submit and refused to be silent. In my own life, my family history is marked by brave voices who cried out against the injustice of inequity, the sin of the falsely privileged few, or the fallacy of being alone. I count among that list others, not born of my bloodline, but the rare few who fought along someone because it was right and not because it was personally affecting. Some call them traitors, rebels, or heretics, I call them family because they fought for me and what I believe in my heart. I count as kin brave souls, quiet resisters and screaming angels who bellow their rage at the world in the name of equality and justice for all. I call sister, Rosa Parks, who refused to move when the world wrongly called her less than equal. I call brother and sister each and every person who fought , bled and sang at Christopher street in NYC in 1969, and am proud to inherit their legacy of freedom. I count every woman who dared to say she was just as good as a man and had the right to speak her mind as family. I count as family every single person who has died for the freedoms we have been given.
If you were to do the same, count everyone who has struggled for you as family, where does the feeling of being alone go? Does it go quietly out the back door, like a thief in the night as it should? In the face of a family more massive than we can even envision, how can it be we are still alone? Are we not the ones they fought for? Are we not the dream they bled and died for? Are we not the inheritors of that torch, and given with it the duty to lift it high for others to see? Should we not be proud of that familial legacy bequested to us as their next of kin? How can it be that we are alone in our struggle, when there is a line of people who preceded us, shouting their encouragement, beaming their pride at us over our accomplishments and the very fact that we exist is the only reward they sought. Should we not raise our own torches a little higher to honor and give thanks the family who floated over oceans to be here, many falling to illness along the route here, who then turn around and bled even on their own native soils, to fight for the dream of what we would be? Should we give any less thanks to every single person who endured the extreme hardships of standing up and speaking out, so that we could hold the person we love, raise the children we have to be better, and live our lives with a degree of equality and freedom they never had? Their legacy is not an empty one, but one filled with hope, pride and dreams. We are that dream they died defending, we are the source of their pride and their dearest hopes. We are the inheritors of their life and their work to make ours a future worthy of being proud of.
The truth is that we are not alone, we have never been alone, because people have come before us, and their legacy lives on in us. We live lives they could only dream of, from sitting at the front of the bus, casting a vote, or holding the hand of someone we love, and that potential life was what they put theirs aside for. It has always been easier to accept a place in the machine, allow the wool to slide easily over our eyes, and accept our isolation than to stand up, be ourselves, be proud and resist the deceptively seductive belief that we are alone because we are 'special'. We ARE special, but not because we are different from anyone else, but because we are different from EVERYONE else because there has never been another like us nor will there be again. There will never be a 'better' time to stand up, never be a time when it is 'convenient' to help someone whose voice may not be heard, and there will never be another chance to live up to the legacy of those who died for you. I bear a torch for those who have come before me, i bear it in my heart, and that fire helps me stand alone, speak loudly when no one is willing to listen, and to say the things that people don't want to hear because it threatens that comfortable isolation and privileged life. The flame that burns is the fire of heresy, rebellion and treason, but it is also the fire of pride, patriotism and faith, because i believe in what old pieces of paper say, that all of us are equal and have an irrefutable right to seek our own happiness. I do not carry that torch to satisfy any personal need, i carry it to give thanks to those who passed it to me when my lap of the race began and to honor their sacrifice.
Too often we let shortsightedness limit our ability to be thankful to those who have graced our lives, and forget too easily those who came before us. We are not expected to be proud of everything they did in their lives, but we have a duty to continue that struggle so long as what they fought for remains out of reach for our children. While there is still injustice, we must accept the blow of the baton, the shaming of those without the courage to stand or speak even when they feel the same, and we must accept being alone and we must find the strength to do those things by knowing we are never alone. Every time we raise our voices for those who cannot speak, they are with us in spirit even when they are forced to fight against us. Every time we use our inheritance to improve the lives around us, we bring the world one step closer to that dream that so many have died for. So when it comes time to think of what we have to be thankful for, honor those who struggled for us to have things to be thankful for by giving others something else THEY will be thankful for when their time comes. Build a legacy worthy of pride for our children and their children. Even if our sacrifices are never seen or known, they will be felt, because they will be one lap closer to reaching our goal, a place where the light of Liberty, Equality, Truth and Justice shine for us all in equal measure and where we stand united as one people, the human race.