We’re three days into the new year. For most of us, Wednesday’s hangover is a bad memory. We will spend part of the weekend returning gifts and praying for the Patriots to extend their season one more game and hope, against hope, that Gronk somehow pops up in Gillette one more time.
But for today, while we’re still in the habit of writing 2019 and not 2020, maybe it’s time to sit alone quietly and contemplate where our country is going and where we want it to go in the next 362 remaining days of the new year.
Let’s start with the obvious. Someone is going to be president this time next year. It might be the guy who has the job now; it might be someone new. But a change in who occupies the Oval Office isn’t going to magically settle political arguments or bridge the deep chasm separating Democrats and Republicans. We aren’t all going to join hands, take a breath, and say, “Hey, it’s time to move on.”
Let’s face it: It’s become acceptable in the United States to reject out of hand any viewpoint that doesn’t square with our own opinion.
Maybe not a majority of us, but a huge cross section of Americans spend more time digesting opinions filtered through social media and a diminishing amount of time listening attentively to someone else’s take on the world.
I grew up in a place and a time when adults told kids, “Don’t reject someone else’s viewpoint or perspective unless you’ve spent some time walking in their shoes.”
Actually, my father said it in a much more succinct manner. If he heard me criticizing someone or making assumptions about their experiences, he would say, “Why don’t you solve the problem or find the solution?”
My mother would throw cold water on my smug opinions by pointedly directing me to our local library and telling me to go find a book or three or four on the topic I thought I knew so much about.
For 35 years I have plied a trade that has consistently taught me how deceptive and inaccurate first impressions can be. I have unfailingly been proven wrong when, as a reporter, I have made snap assumptions about someone’s background or outlook on life.
OK, no one is really surprised Americans can’t get along. Our country was built by a bunch of rejects, misfits, outlaws and loud mouths who came here or who were already living here because they weren’t welcome anywhere else.
The good news is we are a free nation which means we don’t have to get along. But shouldn’t 2020 finally be the year we make a conscious face-to-face effort to really learn where we are all coming from?
How are we going to solve all of the problems we have largely ignored or paid lip service to unless we find out what each and every one of us brings to the table?
We’ve sent Americans overseas to fight people most of us know nothing about and yet we see no way out of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
We mourn mass murders in schools, churches, malls and nightclubs, but we can’t bring the concerted might and imagination of this country to bear on solving mental illness and gun violence.
We are a nation that has gradually allowed pensions and other economic safety nets to be stripped away from seniors and yet millions of us are 60 years or older.
Opioid addiction is killing Americans of all ages but addiction still remains, to varying degrees, a closeted stigma with many of us walking around saying, “Geez, glad it hasn’t devastated my family.”
What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we stop spinning around in circles rehashing the same disagreements?
I’m no Bible thumper but I always like hearing or reading the passage where someone stands up and says, “Choose me, Lord.”
Instead of spending 2020 looking for leaders, let’s all decide to be leaders determined to end our involvement in no-end wars; stop gun violence; eradicate economic injustice, and vanquish loneliness and addiction. Let’s all choose to make this new year the one in which we stand up and say, “Choose me, I’ll get it done.”
