Since I retired, my morning routine has become pretty simple. My bladder lacks the staying power to allow me to sleep like a retiree should, so I tend to wake around 4:00 a.m. As I climb back in bed, I usually grab my cell phone to check a couple of news outlets and blogs that I follow and then hopefully fall back into a deep sleep for a couple of hours. Today was no different, until 7:30 a.m. I have a doctor’s appointment this morning at 10:30 a.m. and I am fasting. I share that as a warning. I am writing this at 8:00 a.m. with no caffeine in my system.
After an internal debate about whether or not a cup of coffee will upset my blood work, I fought back the urge to cheat and grabbed the laptop. I surfed around for the morning headlines. Then I clicked into Facebook. As I scrolled through the morning timeline, I found the following meme:
It is one of the memes that tends to get copied and pasted, over and over again. If you do a quick read, you very well may be inclined to shout out a loud amen. I did hover over the thumbs-up button for a second or two, but remember; I haven’t had any coffee. I clicked the link to follow it back up the stream to see the motives of whomever the original poster may have been. You guessed it. The person who appeared to be the original poster wasn’t just making an encouraging comment. It was a political rant. I backed out of the thread and closed out of Facebook. Maybe I should have had coffee instead.
But I can’t get this out of my head this morning. Are we so down on our society that we believe all of this to be true? Let’s break this down.
From where I sit, the police are respected by the vast majority of Americans, regardless of political beliefs. They keep us safe and if something goes bump in the night, I’m dialing 911.
Newborns are treasured. My step-daughter had son number 4 in January. He’s a treasure. So are his three older brothers. My daughter has a stepson also. He’s not an infant, but he started out that way and he was and is treasured.
Veterans are revered. I should know. I am one. My truck tag indicates that I’m a vet. I can’t tell you how often I am thanked for my service because someone sees my tag. When I wear my Air Force baseball cap, I am treated like royalty. Far better than I think I deserve.
God is worshiped. If you don’t think he is, I bet you haven’t set foot in Church or opened a Bible in a very long time.
If I were going to post a meme, this would be it: There was once a time when we accepted that different people’s opinions may be different than our own. There was once a time when we all treated each other with human dignity and respect. There was once a time when we each voted for the candidate that we believed would fight for the values we believe in rather than voting for the candidate who attacks those who believe differently than we do. Let’s bring back those times.