GET REAL
Over the weekend, I went to a Black Lives Matter rally, and one person who spoke up about injustices said that we need to get real with each other.
Get real. What does that mean to you?
To me, it means quit beating around the bush, and dumbing things down, and tiptoeing around x, y or z. Just get real!
One of my pet-peeves is when people say that we should all be colorblind. Why on Earth would that be a good idea?! The problem is not that we see color. The problem is how we perceive the color we see, or when we only perceive color. Let's GET REAL--we are human beings. Of course we are going to see color. Of course we are going to see differences. But, what does a difference mean to us? Is it something good, or negative? Does it give advantage, or does it mean danger? Proclaiming to the world that we should all be colorblind is the easy way out of hard discussions that would bring us out of our comfort zones. But, in order for our world to see change, we need these discussions.
We try to shelter children from everything bad that's happened in history. We gloss over slavery. We gloss over the treatment of Native Americans. We gloss over bullying when it is seen in our schools. We gloss over this, we gloss over that. We dumb things down so they never have to know the truth. Let's GET REAL--this won't help anyone. This will raise a generation of blissfully ignorant young people who have no idea of what happened even twenty years before them. And you know what they say--history repeats itself, especially if we aren't careful to remember where we came from.
We want to claim that by allowing transgender people into the women's bathroom that our wives and daughters are in danger--but what about the men who are already in the men's bathroom and want to harm our husbands and sons? What about the women in the women's bathroom who are up to no good? We never want to GET REAL about this. We never want to GET REAL about the fact that there are deeper issues and other factors at play in these sorts of situations.
Perhaps I'm too gung-ho about social issues. Perhaps I am far too perplexed on these matters. Perhaps I could be eating instead of writing this right now. Perhaps I am young and naive. Even if all this is true, I urge you to try it, anyway. If nothing else, we can at least GET REAL to have a meaningful dialogue, or an interesting discussion, or a thought-provoking argument. If nothing else, we can at least GET REAL to give it a try. If nothing else, we can at least GET REAL to take a break from binge-watching reality TV shows, or our endless scrolls down our Facebook feeds. I'm convinced there's more to life than these things we tend to get caught up into and spend all our time on.
But then again, how will we realize this for ourselves unless we GET REAL?
Think about it while I go eat this donut.
Reina
