Isolation

There is the news, there is social media, and there is the real world. In the real world, in a so-called conservative area, one can attend a grandchild’s basketball game and scarcely see what some people desperately believe is a “white person.” The crowd of parents and grandparents are a beautiful mixture of ethnic backgrounds, of shades, colors, and features; and their children and grandchildren run back and forth and jump and play and fall in a joyful, human manner, blissfully unaware of the hateful foolishness that goes on in the narrow, frightened minds of people who want the country to be “white,” which, to anyone with eyes, is an obvious impossibility. And were it “white,” as they desire, who, then, would they have to hate? The answer is simple. They would hate the same people, that, deep down, they have always hated, feared, and loathed: themselves.

But we are not here to preach. We are here to hug our grandchildren, and to make manifest the power of love. We are here to smile and talk with friends and neighbors who are facing the harsh, daily struggles of our time.

Babes in arms, watching, listening, bouncing, smiling, unaware of what their sisters and brothers are doing on the court; unaware that they must pass through security checks and metal detectors as they enter their schools each morning; unaware that they might not come home that day; unaware that their parents might be the newest targets of hate — all of which is the result of a tremendously barren and lonely outlook on life, a tragically unenlightened view of the world. Isolation is murder. We humans can never truly live if we do not live together. We can work, we can strive, we can achieve; but we cannot live.

[ 1949 ]