Martin Luther King, Jr. day 2014
Today I was thinking about fairness and equality and I have to admit, they are concepts that I do not understand well.
Nothing in life is fair and it seems no one is truly equal. The truth is, we are not even created equal. I have to go down to the most basic level to even come close to thinking we are all created equal. In other words, I guess I have to admit that the human race is all one species. In that respect, we are all the same and we are all equal.
However, not all humans are created equally. Some are created in love, some are created in hatred, some are created out of pity and some are created out of stupidity. And it only gets worse after conception.
Imagine the differences between the child that is cared for in the womb and the one that is mistreated from fertilization. The cared for unborn child never knows alcohol or nicotine, isn’t smothered by obesity or challenged by lack of oxygen. Her mother has the means, knowledge and ambition to visit a doctor to make sure the pregnancy is progressing safely and as expected. The mistreated unborn child, on the other hand, must fight for proper nutrition and defend himself against threats from within and without starting at conception.
Our parents and where we are born are two of the first things handed to us without our input, without our consent and completely without thought to fairness or equality. It all falls into place exponentially from there. I’m not talking about the difference between being born in Chicago versus Atlanta either. There are certainly the desperately poor among us in the United States, but I’m really thinking more about the 80% of the world (80% of ~ 7 billion people or about 5.6 billion people) that survives on under ten dollars a day. Or maybe even more clearly, I’m thinking about the 22,000 children that die each day due to poverty.
The air we breath is neither free nor equal, nor is the water we drink.
I have a dre…no actually I have a nightmare. It’s a reoccurring one where I live long enough to see where compounded growth of so many things will lead us. The only thing I can do to calm myself after one of these nightmares is restrict my field of vision, sort of like how the buggy drivers used to put blinders on their horses to keep them from getting spooked.
When I do this I can look at smaller pockets of success and convince myself that progress is being made, somewhere for some few, and that myself, as well as the world as a whole, can change. It can change for the better and it can change against the natural progression.
It takes the courage and determination of many to make the visionary dreams of the few come true.
Today I’m thankful for the visionary dreams of the few that inspire the courage and determination of the many.
Cited statistics from various United Nations and UNICEF reports.
Thank you for a very well thought out post.
Thank you for this message. I, too, have observed inequality and ignorance in my own family’s life. I also see kindness, compassion and hope. And frequently wonder what I can do for others.