I often wonder about peoples' motives and decisions and what they are truly based on. It seems as if we can categorize them easily enough into love or fear. Though there is a whole spectrum of emotions between the two polar opposites, many decisions that are truly impactful can be made by just the two.
Robert Frost wrote, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
I ask of you, "Which path will you travel down?"
When Republican hopeful Donald Trump comments on the need for a ban of Muslim immigrants, he is in fact acting as a demagogue for islamophobic America. After living here in Canada since 2010, I simply love, and am astounding by the diversity and acceptance of a northern community such as Prince George.
So when comments of a similar nature to Trump's were made here in B.C. regarding the Syrian refugees, all I could think of is that the propaganda of fear from the U.S. has penetrated Canada.
According to a recent report by Richard Seager of Columbia University in New York, the Syrian conflict was kicked into gear by climate change. Climate change is something that we can all hang our heads to as we are all contributing to it in our current societal norms of living. Too many of us are too fearful to step out of our comfort zone for the betterment of the global community.
In the age of social media, we often self-segregate in a highschoolish manner into the "cliques" of our peers that share the same ideas, and live lives as our own. Prior to having an online community, we had to actually converse and interact with others that did not exactly have the same ideas as our own.
These people were our neighbours and our community members. Through the unavoidable interaction of different people in our own communities, we grow as humans. It is when you are most uncomfortable in your surroundings that you grow. I suggest that we all put ourselves in a new and unique situation this winter and see if we can force growth and perhaps a bloom.
Love thy neighbour, and I don't mean your next door neighbour.
I am talking about all of our global neighbours. Stephen Hawking, the famed physicist, insisted that empathy is in desperately short supply. Surely, we can discover a bit more empathy during the darkest month of the year and arrive at January's door step with fresh hope with the return of the sun and the prospect of new growth in spring.
