Tuesday, July 16, 2024
I’ve been thinking about the famous phrase One Country, One Destiny.
When your heart wants to harden and close, I hope you will sweat, strain and toil to keep it open.
When despair tries to dominate your thoughts, I pray you can aggressively seek out and find a hope that nourishes.
If you’ve lost touch with a friend or loved one because your politics seemed unnavigable together, I hope you might reach out and remind each other that love is vast and wonderous and far more important than even the staunchest of differing opinions.
Our neighbors are not our enemies. “The Other” is not responsible for the mess our minds are in. Our national quagmire of the moment need not be an existential threat to the ties that bind.
United was never intended to mean that our nation’s people would, could, or should share the same mindset; rather it means that your future and mine are inexorably linked. By choice. With respect. As citizens. Of a nation. One that believes that debate, negotiation, persuasion and compromise are the appropriate methods for settling our inevitable disagreements.
Violence, and attempts to justify it, only begets more and escalating violence. Our hearts, when we are quiet and still, know there is a better way.
Peace.
Until Next Time,
Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC