Am I Making a Difference? - episode 61
Another inspirational woman joins us for today’s conversation. Micah, 25, and pondering some big thoughts as she figures out how to head into the deep waters of adulthood post-college graduation. What’s next? What are the expectations? What is the timeline? Through an unforeseen accident Micah had the mandated time to reflect, and decide the direction she wanted to head. Micah discovered plans can be made but they may not unfold the way we want. She learned the value of being adaptable, and when flexibility needs to take center stage.
The phrase Micah is using for 2021 is impact. Intentional impact. It’s slowing down, taking some me-time, and coming up with some goals you can head towards. You don’t need to worry about what’s next. You need to live in the now, and see how things unfold. Along the way you can look for opportunities to elevate others. There is endless joy in being there for someone else. Oh, and remember to breathe.
Open-minded. Loving. Graceful.
— Micah
Hate is Hate
Thoughts from Am I Making a Difference?
Two things happened right about the same time. The first was this conversation with Micah who shared she is of Fillipino descent. (See episode 19 of the her podcast SZN with friend Sharlene, I am a Proud AAPI Womxn. AAPI stands for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.) The second was listening to an episode of Red Table Talk (with Jada Pinkett Smith, her mom Adrienne, and daughter Willow, which streams on Facebook) about the animosity between the Asian and black communities. These got me to thinking, pondering really, Why do we hate?
We have personal experiences, human nature, history, and the media to greatly influence how we think/feel. We are born, we live our lives. Depending on who we are, and the way we were raised, generalizations are made. We ascribe traits and characteristics to whole groups of people based on, usually, a very limited sampling in our own experiences or things we have heard. Or things we assume. Yes, there are cultural differences. Yes, there are generational differences.
What is hate really? (Word-nerd alert.) According to thesaurus.com:
hate - extreme dislike
I am going to go out on a limb and give three reasons why I think we hate.
Ignorance - We don’t know about other cultures or generational differences.
Apathy - We don’t care about other cultures or generational differences.
Close-mindedness - We don’t want to know about other cultures or generational differences.
Over-simplification? Perhaps. Yet if we can identify why we hate maybe it’s not a big jump to want to do better, to be better. Do we really want to go through life not knowing, not caring, not wanting to see each other? I know I don’t. How very sad, tragic really, to miss out on the richness of diversity, on the beauty of variety. You are not very different from me, and I am not very different from you. At the center we are the same. Let’s take life, one person at a time, one encounter at a time, set aside any and all pre-conceived notions, and connect. Eye contact, and a smile, are a good start.
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but has not solved one yet. — Maya Angelou
