Monday, November 22, 2010

50 questions to free your mind

It's Monday again. And a hard Monday to get out of bed, I must say. I would have liked nothing better than to roll over, snuggle back down in the blanket, and sleep the day away. Alas, life calls.

One good thing about Mondays -- it's time again for 50 Questions to Free Your Mind, courtesy of City Girl.

Week 5: What is the one thing you would like to change most about this world?

I'd like to have a job where I can get paid to roll over and sleep in every day!

No, not really.

I'd love to have less intolerance in the world. It seems that so many of our other problems stem from the very problem of intolerance. Wars are fought over it. Lives are lost over it. And really? What's the point?

One of the great things about the world is all the diversity. I think its fantastic that there can be as many ways of looking at a situation as there are eyes doing the looking. We can learn alot from one another if we listened to other opinions. We may end up learning things we would never have thought of on our own.

Instead, it seems that we are so quick to condemn other opinions that are not the same as ours. We are so quick to point fingers at those behind the opinions. And we are so quick to demand retaliation on those behind the opinions for... what? Not being us?

It saddens me that the media just eats this behavior up, sensationalizes it, and encourages more of the same behavior in the future.

I once read a funny little book by Fannie Flagg. I don't remember the name of it. But in the book, a woman who made her living doing interviews died and got to go up to heaven and interview God (this may have actually been a dream. I don't remember) What I do remember is her final question to God "If you could go back and do anything differently, what would it be?" And God said She (God was a she) would make everyone's skin the same color. She said that when She made people, She loved how many different shades of skin there were, like flowers in the field or leaves changing color in the fall. She thought that people would see the beauty in all the different colors of skin and appreciate one another for how unique each person was. Instead, people used the color of their skin to enslave one another and discriminate against one another and start wars with one another. God said that it made Her so sad that all Her beautiful colors caused so much distress. If She had to do it over, She just would have made one color.

Yeah, it's kind of a silly little scene in a silly little book, but one that really makes you thing, huh?

If I could change that one thing about the world, I'd make us all appreciate those colors.

And I'd make everyone refer to God as "She" :)

1 comment:

A Prelude To... said...

Great post. It's definitely something to think about.
I think it would be so sad if we all were the same color. I like the description of choosing our skin colors like the flowers in the field or the leaves changing colors. It is all beauty and we've done so much to destroy it.