I was talking to someone whom I greatly respect about some of the pressing issues facing us all right now, and he said that some of our current affairs made him embarrassed to be a member of the human race. I hadn’t heard that phrase before, and it struck me as humorous at first, but if you take it literally, he’s completely right.
Pause and create your mental list of the realities that exist today that make you cringe inside. My list includes the facts that:
- 1 out of 50 American children will experience homelessness this year;
- in 2008 39.8 Americans lived in poverty (meaning they had income of less than about $22,000 for a family of four and aren’t able to provide for their basic needs);
- a police officer cannot afford to own a median-priced home in over 40% of our communities;
- 40% of solid waste in our landfills is paper and cardboard, meaning we throw away about 71.8 million tons of paper every year;
- the air inside our homes, offices and schools, where we spend 90% of our time, can be 2-5 times more polluted than the air outside;
- 91% of Americans lie regularly.
I could go on, but that’s enough. And this is in no way meant to be depressing - I hope that this is a very loud wake up call. This list is embarrassing, not disheartening or overwhelming. According to Webster’s dictionary, embarrass means to cause self-conscious distress. We should be distressed, and we should each be looking inward to think about what we are doing about it because these are circumstances that we should not accept. We should not allow these situations to continue to exist - and make no mistake, through our action or delay, we are allowing these facts to be. We have the ability to change them; we just haven’t chosen to do that so far.
I believe strongly that there is no reason that almost 15% of Americans aren’t sure that they’ll be able to pay their mortgage or rent this month, that they’ll be able to feed their kids dinner tonight or that they’ll be able to fill a prescription the next time they get sick. It is inexcusable that any child should try to go to sleep or to school with a stomach grumbling for food. Why on earth don’t we recycle paper or think about what chemicals we are putting into our homes? Perhaps part of the problem is that we aren’t being honest with each other - or with ourselves - about what we can do to change what’s going on around us.
This is my list and my commitment is to put my time, energy and resources into scratching them off, so instead of having a list of embarrassments, I have a list of things that make me proud to be a member of the human race. I hope you’ll add your thoughts and tell me how we can work together to change what we see when we look at each other.
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