I am a little overwhelmed today.
The daily news. This world. The piles that are heaped around everywhere. It is all a bit harrowing.
I mean, if a black man can’t go for a jog without being hunted down and killed like some wild animal? Then what?
If a respected doctor can’t sit in the safety of her own home without semi-automatic weaponed protesters clamoring at her door?
If a person can’t wear a mask to protect themselves from COVID-19 without being threatened? How is this even happening?
If you read through any date’s accounts of histories, you are certain to find numerous brave souls peering out from the past.
Today was certainly an example, from a “this day in history” reference. There was Polish resistance fighter, Witold Pilecki, who had volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz to gain information about the Holocaust. He was arrested by communist police on this date, decades ago.
And Jackie Robinson, standing strong for his right to play baseball, as white protesters gathered and shouted no.
Mohandas Gandhi beginning a 21-day fast in protest against British oppression in India.
Or Mordecai Anielewicz, known for his efforts in coordinating the largest Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust, dying as NAZI troops surrounded his command bunker at 18 Miła Street. It was his birthday, May 8th. He committed suicide, on his birthday, rather than being taken by the Nazis.
This is also VE Day. The Europeans celebrating the victory over Germany during WWII in 1945. I thought about my Dad who fought on the European Front. Who was there in England, and Germany, and France. I wondered what it was like for him, when he was finally on the boat, on the way back home. What it meant to him to see the shores of the U.S. as they appeared on the horizon.
I doubt that he would be very proud of the things happening in this country right now. The country he fought to defend, even though the thought of war clattered against his peaceful inner core.
I cried for it all this morning.
Sometimes, there seems to be no hope.
Yet, in our hearts, what do we know?
To get through this, to be better than this, to come through to the other side stronger, and more able —
We have to have hope.
And beliefs.
We have to keep believing in ourselves and our goodness.
We have to keep believing in those people who we know are around us, the ones we know are honorable too.
We have to believe that virtue will preside.
We can never lose the belief that is embedded in our very core, the one that tells us about peace, love, acceptance, and good. That will be our future, and then our history. And for now, it will be today.
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“It is good people who make good places.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
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“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
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“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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