Tolerance

I had a fever for four and a half days, I'm three days into my antibiotics for the resulting bronchitis, and all I did was lay there and think about life, and suffer. As I thought about life, it occurred to me how many people are routinely the target of aggression only because they are different. It seems like so many people just look for reasons to hate, and any "non-normal" behavior makes for an easy target for the masses.

I often see a guy who works near me, and is halfway through the sex change process. Apparently one gets to this halfway point by taking estrogen for an extended period of time and gradually transforming your appearance into that of a woman. There are so many people that have ill will toward him, and I'm not talking about hidden, private and relatively healthy ill will, I'm talking about open disdain that needs the laws against hate crimes to keep it in check. This man's choice for his life is not what most of us would choose, but is it worth hating over?

When you look into the night sky and see the same stars that Galileo saw, you get a sense of how temporary we are, and what a small piece of the history of things that each of us represents. With such a small window in which to live and be decent, why do we spend so much of our energy on anger and hate? We hate over differences mostly, differences in: religious beliefs, appearance, sexual orientation, political orientation and so much more.

The sun keeps us all alive, and our bodies need the same food and water. If we all looked the same, sounded the same, and believed exactly the same things about the same God, we would still have a thousand other things that make us unique. At some point, to appreciate anyone else we have to accept their differences.

We're all really much closer than you might think anyway; the water molecules we drink have been in other peoples bodies, and they got out somehow...

It has been a really long and painful week, thank you for indulging me.