Adults don’t need as many tangible presents on holidays or birthdays, which is why I think I get some of the best gifts, and they don’t really cost anything. I feel grateful to be alive when I read a positive human story in the news or on social media, and as a year winds down and the new one begins, all it takes is one such story and it feels as if hope never truly dies.
I most enjoy the stories that feature true appreciation of people who used to be marginalized because of visible or hidden life challenges. I read about students with Down Syndrome being crowned prom king and queen. I see posts in which students have adopted victims of bullying, surrounding them with positive presence to keep them a safe distance from their tormentors. Never would I have thought that I would see these things in my lifetime, yet they have come true.
Human kindness is the most inexpensive thing you can give to somebody, yet sometimes it can be the most difficult as well. We’re programmed to accept the disappointments of a cruel world and pass them on as if “it’s always been like that” or “It was done to me that way” is a suitable excuse to do so. When the gang wants to do “A” and one person says, “Let’s just not do ‘A’ for once,” it’s such a shocking revelation that the others become defensive and insist that everybody present must do “A” or some great unwritten rule will be forever changed. Somebody might be the first person to not get hurt; that’s tough, to end the cycle with yourself if you were part of the way it was before. Money wise, though, it still costs nothing.
Folks, it takes some painful changes to make the world better sometimes. I’d even go out on a limb and say that there is surely some radical person out there right now who is watching people like him doing something horrible, and he might be thinking, “I really don’t want to do that.” Of course that scares him, because that impenetrable wall of radical thinking cannot survive even one chink in its structure, so even the thought of not following the prescribed agenda means one is not truly one hundred percent with the program. Two snowflakes are not alike, but by gosh radicalism demands that everybody be the same or risk certain doom. They hit for the soul, these non-changeable folks.
The other week I was watching the panoply of North Korea’s military on parade, and while I admired the precision of the even rows of countless goose-stepping marching militants, I wondered if one of the men wore boxers instead of briefs or even–Heaven forbid!!–was going commando. On the outside they looked the same, so would it matter? Okay, a military parade demands uniforms and uniformity, but how far does sameness go? Down to the underwear, or into the very spirits of humanity?
I have seen people with unusually colored hair or body jewelry nobody would have dreamed of wearing ten years ago on the street, let alone in the workplace. Somebody recently showed me studs consisting of subcutaneous posts inserted under the skin of both arms to enhance tattoos. Jobs get done just the same as they did back in the good old days of uniforms and personal appearance strictures. Sure there are places where the demand for decorum is greater, but we still have choices as to where we want to work and how much compromise we can handle.
Thank goodness there is room for changes to happen today. We could still be in a world where unusual things are shunned in favor of what has always been. That can get expensive and doesn’t warm the heart like real change for the good of humanity.
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