Sunday, November 27, 2011

Black Friday and Peace On Earth

Peace on Earth, can it be
Every child must be made aware
Every child must be made to care
Care enough for his fellow man
To give all the love that he can



Remember those lyrics? Peace On Earth.

The Christmas carol duet performed by Andy Williams and David Bowie rang out over the airwaves as I listened to the radio in my car on Black Friday.

Every child must be made aware
Every child must be made to care


I wondered, who is teaching the children to care about others?
It left the teaching curriculum a long time ago in California.

Churches?
Hardly anyone I know still goes to church or brings their children to church.

The state? Daycare? Babysitters?
Who?

Then I came home and turned on the TV news. Pepper spraying fellow humans to greedily take an Xbox, people trampling, grabbing, pushing and even shooting in order to get what they want.

I mused over the degradation of our society and over the loss of people giving of themselves to help others. My grandparents taught me to leave things behind so others may also have them.

I was reminded of a time in Tahoe when I went to Safeway at night right before a blizzard was due to come in. There were two bottles of windshield wiper fluid left- the kind that doesn’t freeze and is vital to driving in snow and slush. I could have used two bottles, but my grandpa’s voice came to me. “Take two and you’ve taken from someone who might desperately need that bottle. You only need one.”

I left the other bottle there for someone else. I mentioned to a friend that night there were only two bottles of fluid left and that I had left the other one there in case someone really needed it. He seemed pleasantly shocked that I had considered another person and that two bottles was more than I needed at that moment.

Thinking of others isn’t the norm anymore. I really wonder what happened to our society.

What has this world come to? How do we find our humanity again? Where are the grandparents?