Some Words...

It seems that anything I may write lacks significance when compared to what's going on in the South. As much as I love to vent, that's what this blog is for, it just seems meaningless. Instead I've decided to write some words that may inspire you to reflect, to regret, to be thankful...to feel. It's all I have to offer right now.

In a lifetime, a person can learn a lot of lessons or they may learn too few.
Humans, by design, are flawed. We have the ability to be selfish, to be self-serving, to lie, to cheat, to harm. More importantly we have the ability to reflect, to have a conscience, to have compassion, to be giving, to be selfless, to defy those stereotypes that were set from the ones that came before us. We as humans have the ability to change, not only ourselves, but the world around us.

I've lived quite a few years on this earth, never have I been so ashamed to be an American. I grew up thinking that 'freedom' was what made this country great. Little did I know that rarely does freedom extend it's opportunity to those to poor to afford it. Freedom is not 'free' after all. The cost, the price tag, sometimes comes at a cost too high for some to obtain it. I've learned that we are only free, until we must rely on someone else, on a government, to protect us. We have wars to protect our freedom, yet in the end...who really ends up safe? Is it the mother that lost her son to war that sits in front of a fancy ranch waiting to be heard by the one man we nominated to make us free? Is it the child that struggles to keep his head up because he's so dehydrated that his little body can barely keep the blood flowing through his veins. Or is that woman who thought that herself and her two children were finally going to make it to safety until that moment when she put her 2 year old on a bus to 'freedom' while she was then pushed back from the doors and left behind, forced to watch her child leave without her? Was she free...free to choose...free to flee...free to run after that bus and beg them to let her join her child? As I sit and watch all the horrible stories unfold after such a devastating natural disaster, am I free to help them? Are any of us really free?

I donated money because it's all I can do...and that seems so insignificant. Will money bring back the hundreds that have passed on not from disease, but from negligence of human life? I want to shout from the mountain tops...why are these people still suffering, but I can't., I'm not free to shout from any mountain top without fear of being arrested. So I sit and I watch. It's all I can do.

I've learned a lesson this past week, it's not one I ever really wanted to learn. People are not free. No matter how much we tell ourselves that this is the land of the free, there is always someone pulling the strings. Someone higher up....and I don't mean God.