Finding Us
Six days into 2021 and I cried. Closing the door on a year where several friends died from covid, and family members got covid and recovered looked like a promise of a better year. Unfortunately, the pandemic rages and unrest roils throughout our nation. What I choose to do with this set of circumstances is a question my mom and grandmother and great grandmother answered with their own wars raging during their lifetime.
For mom, it was the Vietnam War and the end of WWII. For the biological grandmother I never met, it was two world wars and the Great Depression. For my great-great-grandmother whom I never met, it was probably the occupation of the Spanish in the Philippines on my father’s side or the influx of foreigners into the Hawaiian Islands for my grandparents on my mother's side. I forget every generation has had chaos, wars, famine, and disaster. What I choose to do in a time when protestors breaking into the nation’s capitol looms darkly is to look at how far we have come.
We have a long way to go but I haven’t had to deal with a world war in my lifetime. Not yet and I hope I never have to. I haven’t left my country and my family for a better life like my grandparents did when they left the Philippines in the early 1900s. I haven’t jumped on a ship fleeing for a better life in a country I never went to like my grandfather on my mother’s side.
The point is we have it good. I have lived in the same house for over 20 years married to the same man for almost 30 years. Stability, love, and care is my base camp. On the day after the sixth day of 2021, I choose to look to the good. To fix in my mind the things that are right. I have no social media services I want to promote except to say what you post matters.
Your social media presence and post matters. You can choose to use your social media presence to love or hate. Lift up or tear down. Show care or disregard. It’s up to you. I believe in you. I believe in us. Let’s stand together.
For some reason, I keep thinking of this song, 100 Years.