What has our heart been trained to believe?
From a young age, love just seemed like a natural feeling. I felt love for people until, whether implicitly or explicitly, people let me know that love might not need to be as open as I naturally believed it to be.Children love naturally. In fact, they love and trust so naturally that they need to be taught to be cautious about a stranger trying to give them free candy.
We don’t teach people how to love because love comes naturally. However, we demonstrate how to love deeply, and we most certainly exemplify how to withhold love.
And learning to withhold love is dangerous. I’ve heard people use hateful words, (racially insensitive words, words that objectify women) and excuse them away because “they were raised in a different time.”
Our hearts get trained to hate and to exclude and to accept injustice.
On October 1, 1995, Nelson Mandela referenced this idea in a speech on the nature of love and hate: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”Mr. Mandela understood the power of love, but more importantly he understood that though hate can be powerful it is not as powerful as love.And all too often, that love compels people to speak out: against apartheid, against social injustice, against tyranny, against inequalities and inequities, and against hatred of all kinds.
Silence should never be the option.
Plato said that a person’s silence is a sign of their consent, and so many others, throughout history, have stated much of the same.
Yet people rationalize and compartmentalize and their voices remain silent.
Nelson Mandela was willing to be persecuted for the sake of justice. Jesus was, too. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” and he understood that equality was worth sacrifice.
Justice matters. Treating people equitably matters. People’s lives matter. Love matters.
Neutrality is not an option in matters of justice.
So we have to train our young people to always protect, always embrace, always hope, and always persevere. We have to train them to use their voice to speak out against hatred, to stand up against injustice.
When actions intend to divide and segregate, we cannot be silent, we cannot sit idly as spectators. The quote by Desmond Tutu rings in my ears: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
- Who will we embrace today?
- Who will we speak up for today?
- Who will we love today to ensure that injustice does not grip them?
[I would love to hear your comments and thoughts about this post. Use the comment section below or click here to tell your story.]
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