Have you turned on your TV to a news station recently without hearing some politician talk about why the candidate of the opposite party is a liar, unqualified, hateful, racist, unintelligent or egotistical? How long has it been since the Black Lives Matter/ Blue Lives Matter/ All Lives Matter movements haven’t caused racial tensions to divide the population even further? Did you know that so far in 2016 there have been 218 mass shootings? The last one was on August 1 in Evansville, Indiana, with four teenagers injured. Why is it that it seems like everywhere we look in the news we see hate, violence, and suffering? We are living in a time that can definitely leave you feeling dejected and questioning how we ended up in the place that we are in.
This past weekend, I was out at dinner with my family in Asheville, North Carolina. It was a fantastic evening. We had a table outside and could people watch to our heart’s desire. Now if you know anything about Asheville, you know there are street performers down every street, on every corner, and doing just about anything you can think of. To our left, there were two very little boys playing guitars and a small crowd watching them. Now, these two kids are more musically inclined than I could ever hope to be and were very talented, but they also weren’t child prodigies. They were just two elementary age kids doing something they loved simply because they loved it. As we were happily watching these two young boys play, an obviously homeless man walks by and pauses for a moment to listen as well. He then reaches into his pocket, walks up to their guitar case, drops a dollar in it, and continues on his way.
Can we all just take a moment to really think about that?
A person that we are accustomed to seeing ask for money instead gave his away to two kids bringing joy to the people around them. A person that has probably known what it truly feels like to have nothing. Between me and that homeless man, who do you think would have appreciated that dollar more and put it to better use? I of course do not know the background of this man and what has happened in his life; what I do know is that it is clear he has struggled and is continuing to struggle. It is clear he did not have much to give, and yet he gave. To me, that dollar was worth far more than any sum thrown into that guitar case. That dollar represented the love that really surrounds us daily if we take a minute to watch it happening.
There are so many reasons today to feel angry about society and humanity. It is so easy to lose hope in people when they fling around hate speech and bullets. However, there are so many reasons to feel hopeful too. When someone who has so little still spreads love around, what could I be doing? What could you be doing? Instead of complaining about how horrible our presidential candidates are and blaming each other for all of our problems, what could we be doing to make the world around us a little bit better of a place? A little bit happier of a place?
We all live in this world together and personally I would rather see more of the generosity and love that that man showed than hear about the next mass shooting. How about we all take a leaf out of Selena Gomez’s book and “Kill Em with Kindness”:
“The world can be a nasty place
You know it, I know it, yeah
We don't have to fall from grace
Put down the weapons you fight with
And kill 'em with kindness.”
I couldn’t have said it better, Selena.
