by Kenneth Justice
~ I wasn’t kidding before when I said the warm weather brings out the people with signs in my community <article>
Last night on my way home from work I noticed these four young adults on the corner holding their DIY poster board ‘Peace’ signs.
What is your first reaction when you see young people like this? Do you roll your eyes and put your head down and try to walk by them without making eye-contact?
Do you think to yourself; here are a bunch of hippie wannabees decked out in their hipster clothes that they probably spent top dollar at Macy’s on?
After I took a couple pictures I went over to talk with the young man in glasses;
“So whats the deal man, were you guys sitting around this morning listening to some Bob Marley and you said to yourselves, ‘lets go outside and hold some peace signs dude’?”
he shook his head,
“no man, we’re not on drugs at all. We just wanted to spread a little love. We figured if we could brighten up one person’s day today then we did something good….even if we could just get one person to give us a thumb’s up.”
First off, I was a little put off by his association with drugs & Bob Marley; C’mon, I love Bob Marley! Does that mean I have to be smoking pot to get my Rasta on???
“We figured if we could brighten up one person’s day today then we did something good….”
Sure, these young adults are probably as close to a modern cliche as you can get nowadays, they are the grandchildren of Timothy Leary and everything the 1960′s represented, the closest these kids have gotten to free love and Lennon is hanging out at FYE listening to the Beatles on C.D…….
BUT….
I’m going to be honest with you, they made me smile.
Normally when I go through this part of town I’m greeted by fundamentalist Christians who are hungrily licking their lips and waiting to pounce on me to tell me of my utter destruction and my future life where they believe I’m going to be burning in a ever-burning lake of fire.
It doesn’t matter that I have faith in Jesus also, because I don’t prescribe to their version of Christianity I’m on the outside; I’m a degenerate in their estimation.
And as I pointed out in yesterday’s post, the tragedy in Boston was terrible, yet the reality we face is that we live in a world of constant tragedy.
I live here in the United States where the horrors that befall so many of the people in Africa are barely noticed by our news media.
You want Africa to make U.S. news, well you’re going to have to do more than genocide, the deaths of millions from AIDS, and modern slavery in the Ivory Coast…..no, us American’s are too busy with watching Dancing with the Stars to give a hoot about a country on the other side of the ocean.
Don’t get me wrong…..I’m not suggesting we live in a state of constant mourning over the tragedies that befall the human race; if we did that we might be overcome with depression and anxiety.
But I wonder if somewhere along the lines we have become a little too jaded.
What happened to us as a people that when a couple kids take the time to hold up some signs that say “Peace”, “Love” and “Everything’s Going to be Alright” we get disgusted and say under our breath, “Damn teenagers!”
How willing are we to take the amount of time that these kids put into their little excursion and do our part in putting a smile on someone’s face?
Or are we too busy playing Facebook games to do something worthwhile?
Hey, I’m not going to lie to you, it will likely be a cold day in hell before I stand out on the corner holding a sign that says “Smile you are Beautiful”
But these kids, with their simple little message, words they picked out of a Time Magazine Photo essay on the 1960′s……these kids made me wonder what I’m doing…..
What am I doing?
Am I progressing or repressing?
Am I moving forward in my growth as an individual?
or Am I stagnant, am I going nowhere?
Lots of questions….but as is usual….I have very few answers.
Time for another cup of coffee..
Kenneth
