My friends and all those very close to me did not ask for this president; he was thrust upon us, and now we are asked to treat him accordingly. Most people I know have signed petitions actively; some have gone to protests many actively negate his actions, his lack of civility and diplomacy, and some of them have moved on. He is our president; what can yo do? We will survive. Some have even suggested to move on.
And here is why I cannot. I am a fighter; I have always been a fighter. If I were not a fighter, there is no way I would have survived. I grew up in a home that was a deficit; oh, I had a Dad who loved me, grandparents, an aunt, cousins, but home was chaotic. I did not have a full-fledged anchor, but I did have something-a voice, and it was not a small one. I believed I had to fight to survive-in the classroom and the world. In my younger years, I was a survivor, but I was also a child, so I fought with a level of fear and anxiety, and I brought some of this with me into adulthood.
When I was the parent of adolescent children, I fought; I fought to raise civilized, decent children with good values. Sometimes this was hard, since my children were strong-willed, but I was willing to do the hard work, with no guarantee the outcome would be good. What choice did I have? To give up on my child would mean a terrible defeat, an awful resignation; it would mean a kind of hopelessness and despair, which is so much not a part of my personality, not who I am. I have deep and passionate beliefs in the goodness of my family, my children, but adolescents can test that resolve. Had I resigned and not put up the good fight, that would have been a statement-that I stopped believing that everything would turn out alright in the end.
And now there is a man in office who exceeds all expectations of normalcy, decency, integrity, and some say, what can you do? He is gutting the EPA. What can you do? He is dismantling public education.What can you do? He accused our former president of wire-tapping him-an obvious lie. He lies; he cheats; he is a a criminal. He is building a wall instead of starting us on a road to diplomacy. And I can fight all I want, but with a Republican controlled congress, there is a sense of futility, and perhaps it would be fine to shrug my shoulders and move forward.
But that is not me. It would mean that I had become a person who stopped believing in the power of the fight; the power of the written word; the power of argument; the power of decency, integrity, the world of possibilities. It would mean that I am becoming a person who is resigned to a world that is morally reprehensible, that does not open its doors to immigrants, that does not help the poor, the elderly. It would mean that I am fine with the status quo.
I am older now and feel the power of my voice in a much bigger, stronger way; to back down would mean this is all okay. What if Gandhi had done this? King? Lyndon Johnson? Abraham Lincoln? What about our very own revolutionaries here in America? It is possible to say the Emperor is naked, and even if millions say it, he may still continue to walk around without his clothes and we will just have to accept this at the end of the day.
But sorry, not without a fight. The fight ends when my life does, and even then I can only hope people will remember that I had a voice, and that I used it, hopefully, for the betterment of the world, and always with kindness and compassion!
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