Be a Person not Human

I have a hard time with the fact that people today are still discriminated against in any way. I grew up in a small town where there were only five hundred kids in a school that went from kindergarten to grade twelve. We did not have our first person of color join our school until I was in grade six or seven. I think he felt that he was singled out because of his color and I suppose in reality he was, but we did not treat him differently than anyone else. We had never learned to hate based on race. Whether because we had no one in our town of color before and had so many questions based on everything we heard on the news and from other people in the big city, or because it was a new kid in school, and we never got a lot of them, all the kids wanted to his friend, and he was probably more popular than he had ever been in his life. As time went on he never got in any more trouble than any of the other children and in fact against everything the media tended to guide people towards believing, his whole family became a big part of the community and tried to do good for everyone around them. There are good and bad people in every culture, and in every country, town or city the fact is people need to stop judging based on skin and pay more attention to the actions of people.

It is easy to change what we do to ensure that people feel they are welcome and appreciated. Something as simple as welcoming smile and hello can shift an atmosphere to a positive experience. It can be hard to change how we perceive people especially when we have negative encounters with a specific group. We live in a multicultural country, having miscommunications and cultural differences is a struggle we face every day. Taking time to read about who you are struggling to get along with could give incite into why and help find a solution.

As the world has progressed travel, and relocating to different states, provinces, and countries has become more common. Social media has allowed us to see into further parts of the world, and has a tendency to be one sided allowing discrimination to be rekindled in places it may not exist if situations were portrayed from an unbiased perspective. Although more people try to be accepting and not judge on skin color it can be hard if they are consistently shown and told how horrible these people are. Like everywhere else, not all these people are bad you are seeing crimes that involve someone of that race or culture. I want to continue to remind people of this and hopefully see more people take the time to give a chance to people they would not usually give it to.

My goal this year is to listen more, watch more, and try to place understanding in place of judgment for everyone and everything around me. We all have a story and the world becomes so large and so selfish that we do not consider that a persons actions are based on everything they are dealing with that they do not share with the people they see. We have gotten so fast paced in our lives and so focused on the material goods and how to get them that we forget the people we deal with all have the same problems and hurdles in their lives. Humans are not complicated, in fact we are the most simple creatures if you take out everything we have added to complicate ourselves. Humans need food and water to live, to be happy we all crave love and friendship and intimacy to some level. We need shelter and clothing to feel secure and other than that, the rest is all accessories to try to find enjoyment in the time we are not spending at school or at work. We all have the same needs, our wants, desires, and habits all may differ in some way, but we are all looking for the same results in different ways and to different levels. Color, culture, ethnicity may have different ways and beliefs in what is the correct ways to succeed in fulfilling our needs but the needs are still the same.

I will be getting to travel this year, across the ocean to places I have never been before for a long period that I will be the outsider and the one that has no family or friends where I will be. I still want to be the one to reach out and listen, help someone walk across the street, carry the groceries for the old people that are barely managing and have no help. I want to pay it forward for the time that someone took me in and trusted me with no reason to, in fact had multiple reasons why she shouldn't have. I know how good I have it in this life, it does not mean I do not suffer, that I have not lost some of my closest friends and family and do not have bad days that smiling seems impossible, but on the days I am struggling those are the days that I will strive to do more to help someone else have a great day even if bringing a smile to someone's face who needs it, is all I can do. I am far from rich, I do have times that I have extra money and when I do I help where I can. The times I can not offer money to help, I offer my time and my knowledge. I want to spend more time concentrating on maintaining a balance between self care and growth and doing what I can to help people find a positive mindset and comfort in their lives that no matter where they are from or what they may look like, help them see they are not alone. This world should not feel lonely or unaccepting to anyone, with trillions of people on the planet not one person should feel like they have no one.

My goal is to be less human and more of a person.