Not Up For Debate

In list form because I’m not in the mood for real paragraphs this week:

1. Racism and discrimination make no sense. At all. Treating anyone poorly for any reason is rude and in many cases deadly. You are only doing it because you want to feel better than another human being. You aren’t better than anyone else. Literally nothing about you makes you better than anyone else. All humans are humans. It really is that simple. And if you are wasting any teeny tiny bit of your precious time on Earth making anyone else feel less than because of the color of their skin, who they love, how they identify, or who they pray to or don’t pray to, you are the problem. Please look inward and find some self-esteem and stop wasting any time putting other people down for living. People are dying because you can’t get over the fact that nothing about you makes you better than anyone else
2. Respect means “due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others” (According to Google) Again, it’s that simple. If we respect our fellow human beings, that means we mind our own damn business when whatever they are doing truly has no harmful effect on anyone else. We speak up and say something when what other people do harms others. Do no harm.
3. Pie is delicious. There’s some form of pie that everyone loves. It’s a fact.
4. Kindness matters. The words that you choose to use every time you speak matter. Someone somewhere is listening to what you say and how you say it. You will at some point come into contact with a child (read: a sponge that happens to look like a human). Think before you speak and say you’re sorry when you mess up.
5. Excuses are useless. You are a human which means who make mistakes often. You need to hold yourself accountable for your mistakes and try your best to do better next time. There is no room to explain your mistake away. You aren’t perfect, but you are capable of trying your best to do better. Just do that please.
6. Assault with a deadly weapon (or some comparable phrasing thereof) is a crime everywhere. Cars are deadly weapons. You need at least a year of training to drive a car. You need to take a test to drive a car. You need to maintain a license to drive a car. You need insurance to drive a car. Because cars are deadly weapons and should be regulated as something that could and does kill people when not operated properly. Now replace every time I wrote car with the word gun. And then maybe, just maybe you’ll understand how foolish it sounds when you try to act like a deadly weapon capable of killing people if used improperly shouldn’t be regulated.
7. The Constitution was written at a time when the only people allowed to vote were white men who owned property. Black people were considered three-fifths of a person. Guns required significant time to load. Women could be raped without consequence. Cars did not exist. Please sit all the way down if you ever attempt to make an argument that the men who wrote the Constitution had any conceivable notion that the world we live in today would look like the world in 1789. And if you want the world we live in to look like it did in 1789, then you are a full on problem.
8. Loving others and being kind to everyone doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be critical of people and institutions that actively harm other human beings. It is your duty to look at injustices in the world and do what you can where you can to correct them. My 4 year old daughter is the prime example of this. The girl makes all the way sure that fairness and equity are paramount in our house. She’s 4. You’re whatever age you are so if she can do it, so can you.
9. If someone says they love you, they shouldn’t act in a way that harms you. That isn’t love. If you are in a situation where anyone in your life is actively making you feel guilty or bad or shameful for simply living, they are abusing you. Domestic abuse (which includes the people you reside with, you do not have to be in an intimate partner relationship with your abuser for it to be abuse) includes emotional abuse. Just because someone doesn’t physically harm you doesn’t mean they aren’t abusing you. Please know that no one ever has a right to make you feel less than for just living. And if someone if making you feel that way and you want help, please know that help is readily available.

That’s all I’ve got this week. Please do not take this list to mean that all I’m sitting around thinking about is what is all the way messed up with the world. Please know that joy and critical thinking about hard and harsh realities can coexist. Please be someone who seeks to do no harm. Happy Wednesday!