since, however

Thank goodness I have never been in a situation where I thought I might drown... however the few people I have spoken with who were saved from an almost drowning have made it very clear in their description just how miserable, fearful and dominating it was for them.

Thank goodness I have never been held at gun point or mugged or stopped on the street having someone with a weapon demand my valuables...however the few people I know who have had that experience have made it very clear that time stopped, their breath froze and a quiver of shock controlled their body. For them it still resonates and they find no reason to understand it.

Thank goodness I have never I have never had a life threatening disease being told by a doctor I might have only a few months left to live...however, sadly I have known some people who were given that news and then had to face the world with that knowledge. For them the emotions ran wild, their anger moved from rage to calm, from frantic to finally realizing the need to place closure in their life.

Thank goodness I have never been homeless. I think I understand the meaning of living on the street, seeking a shelter, begging for food. But do I? So many of us see people lying on ground with a dirty blanket and maybe a shopping cart of plastic bags filled with items discernible, and some foreign that seem to look like trash. Some of us mutter under our breath “druggie”, “bum”, “get a job”, “lazy”, “you must have deserved this”, and we quickly walk faster past them or immediately turn our eyes to the ground. The lucky of us who have not had to find our shelter under an overhang of some store front, on the metal bench of a bus stop, on the choppy concrete of a darkened parking lot never really know what those who seek shelter must be feeling what they fear and if they see hope ever happening.

There is so much in this world we have not experienced but have come in contact with those in our lives, whether close family or friends or strangers, who have or are currently entrenched in pain, fear, distrust, worry, or doom. We think we know their emotions and often times we try to act as caregivers for their ailments. We either talk about their conditions continuously as if we were on crack or we become silent hoping nothing said will remove us even further from recognizing our inability to help.

Throughout this primary year we hear the candidates running for president talk about things they know nothing of personally but love to pontificate from some glass tower as if they were experts. They hate the Gay but none of them are Gay and don’t know what denial of marriage, adoption, job security is all about. They shout about women having no rights to their own reproductive organs and none of them have been raped, have had an incestial relationship with their father or brother, or had to make a choice of deciding my life or the life of a fetus. They shout about unemployment and that only the lazy are unemployed, none of them ever once receiving a pink slip, working at a job one day only to find the gates locked, being downsized so the corporation could do the Capitalistic thing and outsource your job. They want to sign an order making Obamacare illegal, none of them ever once worrying about the type of coverage they have for themselves or their families. Never once having to prioritize food, rent or medical care.

I am not sure why it seems so easy to belittle others, eagerly denying them of the same rights, privileges and pleasures we enjoy, callously demanding that some don’t deserve the basic human existences we have. I am not sure how when we scapegoat, divide, remove the people establishing we versus they we claim we do this under the guise of God and religion. And somehow invoking God’s name or his Bible, justify our inhuman treatment of all God’ children as reasonable and ration-able. I am not sure how if we have never experienced the pain, suffering,fear, loneliness racism, homophobia, religious bigotry ourselves we can blindly permit laws to be made to isolate and restrict.

There is so much, thank God, I have not directly experienced, felt, been the victim of in my life. But in my life I have made every effort to understand sympathize, empathize, become educated in to see just how someone else lives, thrives and survives.

The scary thing for me is that people like Gingrich, Santorum, Paul, and Romney are still running for office on a platform that reads America for some, not all, America my way or no way at all. And the scarier thing for me is that there are millions of haters who still give their support for this sinister and un God like philosophy.

Has America always been this ugly? Has America kept this hate hidden until now? Have we begun to define America in terms of black and white, we vs. they, love it or leave it? We must find compassion, care and concern or eventually some of us will find ourselves as the next group being denied or basic rights. We don’t unless we experienced it, but we can educate ourselves and make decisions on truth instead of fiction and lies.