It's been a difficult week to be a husband, father, and for that matter, just a human being. The self-inflicted war zone that this generation has had to endure in our country over the past several years hit way too close to home this week. We have willing become the United States of the Armed and Dangerous.
Something I take especially personal is the "thoughts and prayers" segment that always seems to follow these events. This verbage has finally been called into question. It's about time and way overdue.
I've done the religious thing for a long time and while this particular commentary isn't specifically about my own struggles with faith, I can tell you that the phrase "thoughts and prayers" is usually code for "I feel bad about the situation but not bad enough to do anything about it, so here's some lip service to make myself feel better about not actually doing anything about said situation.". I stopped saying this phrase a long time ago and if you've been around me long enough, maybe you've picked up on this. This term has become completely and utterly useless. It ranks right up there with other terms like "there's a time and place" and "let's not make this political". All of these phrases are spoken from a place of complacency and inaction.
I want to personally address the different parts of this now overused and abhorrent phrase. Let's start with the "thoughts" part. I think about a lot of things. I think about stress, anxiety, depression, what I didn't eat for breakfast, if my dog Chico needs dog food, you name it. 100% of the time, all those thoughts do is remind me of what I need to do, not do, fix, not fix, etc. Beyond that, thoughts do amazingly nothing. I can think about feeding my dog all the time but if I don't actually feed my dog, he will starve and die. I can think about all that's going on around me but until I take action, nothing will ever change.
Oh, and about taking action. Doing nothing always produces nothing. Really, you can check me on this one. If I never put money in the bank, guess what, there will never be money in there. Interesting thing though, if someone gives you money, especially a lot of money, they can also make you do nothing...but I digress.
Now finally to the "prayers" section. This one can be a touchy subject because it involves questioning a person's own faith and religion. I have to ask the hard question of what have your prayers honestly accomplished? I'm not asking this as some hidden attack on your faith, I seriously want to know? Have you sincerely, earnestly prayed for someone or some situation when you've used this term? Have you seen some cosmically positive outcome to the words that you've hurled into the abyss of the universe? If not, then maybe that's the answer you've actually been given. Maybe your creator gave you the ability to enact change yourself and has left this in your hands to initiate.
No, I don't use this phrase anymore and refuse to do so in the future. I'm not going to say these empty words to try and make myself feel better about things that maybe I can do something about. I'm not going to say this knowing that the generation that follows me, sees right through these baseless and lazy words and absorbs them as insults...salt to their ever growing wounds.
I do say though, I take action in the capacities in which I can and everyday I look for ways to expand that capacity. It's not been a perfect path by no means but at least I'm walking a path, however imperfect it may be at times.
For years, I had thoughts and prayers about the path I wanted to be on and the person I wanted to be. I've never heard a cosmic voice giving me some divine piece of advice that has changed the course of my life forever. Maybe I just wasn't listening hard enough, or maybe the silence was my answer. It wasn't until I took action and starting walking for myself that I ever began to move forward.
As long as this country keeps hiding behind their "thoughts and prayers" we, as a nation, will go nowhere and the generation that follows us will surely die because of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment