Great Divides

History wasn't one of my favorite subjects in school, mainly because of our grumpy old teacher.  Who wanted to study for a guy like that?  But, study I did.  There was that honor roll I had to make so my name would be in the newspaper and my parents would be proud.
 
Honor rolls are good, but are they really?  How about the kid who gets left behind or has been told he's stupid or dumb.  To me, it's a way to favorably label some kids and unfavorably label the rest.  Our generation had classrooms filled with cold-hearted teachers who touted their authority like they were mini Hitlers.  That's not to say all teachers were that way, but many were.  Parochial and public school alike.  I can say that because I attended both.

Life has all kinds of divides, just like the mountains that divide the east from the west.....

• Wealthy and poor.
• Educated and uneducated.
• Employer and employee.
• Teacher and student.
• Young and old.
• White and black.
• Republican, Democrat, and Independent.
• Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu......

These are just the biggies that come to my mind.  All of them are serious and ongoing divisions that keep humanity separated and at war with each other.  Divisions are okay, if they don't elevate one and lower the other.  Just because someone is born poor, doesn't get a college education, and works in a factory does not make him less of a human being than the spoiled brat that daddy makes into a corporate Godzilla with a billion bucks in his back pocket.  There's the basic person involved here, and that makes it wrong to look down on anyone.....of any color, race, age, or religious influence.  All of us are pretty much where we are, doing what we know how to do. 

Oh, I know my views are simplistic and naive, but that's okay.  I'm tired of the divisions.  They seem sillier the older I get.  If the pioneers could make their way across, through, and around the Continental Divide, there's got to be a  way we can make our way peacefully alongside those with more and those with less.  My feeling is that the less a person owns, the less problems there are to contend with.  More possessions, the more problems.  Fairly simple mathematical conclusion.

Every person that has ever lived had and has a unique flavor added to the stew of humanity, and if we take the time to taste how delicious life really is......well, then, we'll realize that all of us need to be exactly as we are.  Instead of finding faults, maybe we should start looking for the flavors.

If I have a crystal keepsake from my great-grandmother, I'm probably not going to throw it around like a Frisbee. Aren't we all someone's keepsake?