I believe we are all born equal onto this earth. We may all die equal as well but that is something we are not privileged to know. I believe that if we do not die as equals, that inequality has nothing to with material things or power, it has to do with our hearts and our souls and whether we have attempted to live with compassion or not.
We are all born as equals. We share certain minerals and biological connections. We share compassion. That does not mean we are all dealt equal opportunities. I would like to think that we all have the opportunity to see to those to whom the world has been cruel as equals, as the people we might have been had our own fortunes been less kind.
We are all born as equals. How we chose to deal with the blows and opportunities life gives us is our choice. Whether we chose to see others as equals or not is a choice. Whether we chose to be bitter or happy is a choice. We all make choices. We all make mistakes. The best we can do is to try not to hurt other people either purposefully or inadvertently. The best we can do is to care. But it is not our job to judge because there is so much we are not privileged to know.
Thank you all, the many of you with your kind words. They meant a lot to me. Childhood rhymes to the contrary, words do hurt. But hopefully we have resilience to overcome them. I had a cup of cocoa and curled up with my cats for a bit, but only for a bit as my step-daughter and her family were coming for dinner, really just an impromptu simple repast of sausage and collards, food to soothe the soul, after which I ran off to the symphony. It was a perfect concert to lift people's spirits in a dreary January: The Overture to Die Fledermaus, a Mozart Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Suite, Strauss's Emperor Waltzes. The music provided the perfect respite for me as well, despite my normal inclinations; it was not a night I would have embraced Bartok.
I can see that I only give a partial portrait here, and therefore much can easily be interpreted in ways I do not intend. But that is another way all people are equal, we all show ourselves only in shadows and angles and half-formed images. Most of the time we do not bare our souls to any but a treasured few. I am only human, with all the faults and failings that being human entails. I know I like pretty things and some may consider this a weakness. I suppose happy was not the best choice of words, because although I am happy it is not because of things.
Those of us in industrial nations, and I assume most of us who read blogs hail from similar lands, live in a world surrounded by things, a world in which one needs things. It does not seem much to ask that those things, while filling a need, also bring a small amount of beauty or joy or contentment, fleeting though that may be. But if the cost and name and value of a thing mean more than the joy of using the thing itself, then one is a slave. One can be enslaved to the sense of not having, to the coveting, just as surely as to the having.
I am very lucky in many ways. One of the things that makes me lucky is that I know I could start over, and that I would still be happy. I've lost everything before. I've even lost everything that mattered, and no I am not referring to things. But I've been extraordinarily lucky because I've never lost my resilience, and I've always known that I could get help if I needed it. And that is what really matters.
We are all born equal onto this earth. It is only in how we live our lives that we distinguish ourselves.
