November 5th, 2020, 7:00 AM.

My eight-month-old son sits on the living room floor, chewing on a stuffed animal, when he suddenly puts it down and starts laughing and clapping. That’s his latest thing: cheering for everyone and everything. You could be the meanest, most miserable soul on the planet and he’d still look you straight in the eyes, grin from ear to ear and give you a big round of applause. Like he’s super proud of you for simply existing.


My gaze shifts from his happy face to the morning news, where stories of a bitterly divided nation once more stream across the TV screen; then shifts again to my phone, where my newsfeed teems with two opposing sides hurling the worst kinds of insults at each other, things they could probably never bring themselves to say to another person without the safe anonymity of a keyboard and screen. Some go so far as to say we have no more room in our society for any feel-good sentiment, or that we must throw out all of the truths we’ve learned about our family and friends over the years and reduce their entire character to whichever oval they chose to fill in on a ballot, as if nothing else has ever or could ever possibly matter again.


I look back at the baby on the floor. We were all exactly like him at one time. He’s still laughing and clapping, cheering for everyone he sees, rooting for all of us, blissfully unaware of the ugliness unfolding around him.



And I’m genuinely wondering at what point 

humankind decided we had

an obligation to teach

our children




how to hate.




Comments

Post a Comment

what do you have to say?

Popular posts from this blog

i can fold a paper crane with my eyes closed.

Image
It's a trick I learned while sitting on the floor of a Brighton funeral home on a cold, snowy mid-April day during my junior year of high school. I don't remember the name of the girl who taught me. I don't remember her face or if she even went to school with me. Five years later, the only thing I can really remember is the sharp contrast of her calm instructions against the heart-wrenching sounds of another girl sobbing in a back room. "Now unfold that piece and pull it up... then pull these two to puff out the body. That's all." The room was full of kids looking down, quietly folding. I tossed my crane into the large pile that had begun to form in the middle of the room. One more out of ten thousand folded tributes to a life ended too soon. In any jumbled, messy story of growing up, there are events that stand alone and apart from the chaos as significant milestones. Often times, these moments are not recognized as being so important and life-changing
Read more

I'm just a little black rain cloud

I have this weird habit of referencing or quoting obscure things from the past. For example, the other day there was this giant cloud of doom over campus that looked like it was just going to open up and start pouring any second, so I started saying "Tut tut, it looks like rain!" over and over again. No one understood it until I explained the context in detail. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zs7DDaNRMM A flashback to childhood every so often is kinda cool.
Read more

writer's block.

Image
"I know this is probably a stupid statement considering where we are at the moment, but holy sh*t, you look miserable." "My eyes are itchy and I can't stop sneezing. I think I'm allergic to something back there." "Allergic? Nah, it's probably just your body rejecting Shaw's." She laughed. "I'm serious," he said. "Would not surprise me at all. This place sucks." There were three carts behind the counter, one filled with brownie cookies and the other filled with ring cakes, all for a table to be set up in the front of the store. "So wait--you're closing tonight and opening tomorrow? That's f*ckin awful." "I'm not opening tomorrow. Susan is in at 5 to bake, and I'm in at 7." "Close enough. Honestly, if I was you, I'd be like f*ck this place. I'm not coming in tomorrow. I'm done. Go ahead, say it: F*ck Shaw's!" She laughs and says it quietly, almost loud enoug
Read more