A few days ago was the day we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. and almost every person I knew on social media posted one of his famous quotes, usually with some fanciful background or some wondrous scroll lettering. All to illustrate the point that they understand the struggle of M.L.K. jr.  But posting an over decorated meme about the civil rights movement baffles me a bit. I understand the need to show support for our leaders but would we have supported them during their time of leadership? The most common quote I saw that day was the quote about choosing to love over hate because hate is too great a burden to bear. I started to wonder if people my age and younger even understood true hate and I am including myself. When you watch the old videos of the actually civil rights movement it’s frightening. Have you ever experienced rabid dogs tearing at your clothes, wanting to eat you alive? I haven’t. Have you ever had scalding hot food dumped on your head simply because you are sitting peacefully in a place you shouldn’t be? I haven’t.
I do know that if that happened to me today I would sure as shit choose hate over love. I would throw so many elbows I would have none left.
I wonder as so many of us are so easily offended if we have ever felt true hate, simply because of the way we look. I wonder if you would still choose love over hate if you weren’t allowed to go into a certain section of a store because your hair was a different texture than is considered the norm. In this age of keeping up with the Jones’ via social media we are so quick to throw up a picture or a quote about how we understand the struggle. God forbid we don’t honor Dr. King or any other national treasure by throwing up a rainbow-colored picture of them. God forbid our friends think we may have missed honoring a legend via social media, meanwhile, we walk right pasted the homeless person at our local Starbucks. What if we as a culture skipped “honoring” people via our profile picture and really honored them by trying to live better. Maybe instead of walking past the homeless person judging why they are homeless, we offer a smile, a kind word or even money and then here is the hard part, after we offer kindness, WE DON’T POST ABOUT IT.
I am not suggesting that social media go the way of the Dodo bird but maybe for a moment we can understand that just because we have everything at our finger tips does not mean we understand everything, including the struggle