Point me toward tomorrow

Point me toward tomorrow

I love history.   Studied it in college; still read it a lot today.  It is very important to know history.  I wish we taught more of it in our schools.

All of the above is absolutely true.   Here is what is also true.  We can and should learn from history.   We should do that so we do not keep having a Groundhog Day.   However, yesterday is done.  It can’t be changed.  It is replete with lots of mistakes.  We can learn from those mistakes but we can’t have a redo.

We are in the midst of a pandemic, that was mishandled from the beginning.  It didn’t go away in 30 days.   Bad optics didn’t make it go away.   Only science finally began to shift the tide in favor of fewer deaths and hospitalizations.

We are also experiencing an outpouring of frustration as Americans, regardless of skin tone, are demanding equal justice for ALL, including those with darker skin.  From the beginning of the first Africans brought to America against their will and enslaved, they have never experienced equal justice.  And now they have had it, one man too many has been murdered and folks are at the tipping point.   What happens next is crucial.

We cannot, no matter how much we desire, go back and have a faster, more appropriate response to the virus.   We cannot, as much as we might want, go back hundreds of years, nor go back 1 year to erase and change the inequities that Americans with darker skin have experienced in our America.  And it is a waste of important energy to try and do so.  We need to stop wasting energy pointing fingers and identifying all the wrongs that have been committed.  We need to spend that energy going toward tomorrow.

We need to spend more time teaching our children about civics and how a democracy is supposed to work.  So they will grow up and vote for change, lobby for change, activate their communities for change.   So they will not sit home, wring their hands and sing “ain’t it awful”, because it, whatever the it is, will continue to be awful until we each do something about it.

We need to spend more time teaching our kids about Capitalism.  It is a wonderful system.  Money does not know color; but it can be used to promote the equal distribution of both money and opportunity. We need to “out” the big corporations that are racist.  We need to use our wonderful American dollar to make sure that American corporations live up to the fine words they are using now.  We need to teach our students how their money, used with discernment, can make a big difference in a capitalistic society.

We can’t keep looking back at past mistakes, except to learn to DO something differently going forward.  There is hope in change for the better.  Revolutions begin with hope, not with oppression as some people think.

Point me toward tomorrow with hope in my heart and action in my deeds.  We did not come this far, only to come this far.