Better

by D. R. Williams

Humanity is f'd up, we need a better way to Live.

I'm under no delusion that I know the best way to Live, but I do have some ideas on how we can live Better. Here I will try to convey them, not with arrogance, but with hope. I've thought about it for many years, and now, in the beginning of 2025, I felt the need to actually write it. Maybe it won't change the world, but maybe it could help someone, somewhere, at some point in time.

My upbringing was in church, and the Words of Jesus influenced my world views as a child. And in church, we sang patriotic songs. My Grandmother taught me it was about "Love, Love, Love:" 'because God loves us, we love each other, mother, father, sister, brother.' In later churches it was "Jesus Loves All the Children of the World," "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land," and "This Little Light of Mine." Maybe a bit silly, but as a kid, those words, and the words of John 3:16 and Matthew 25:31-46 (the way you've treated the weak and the outcast, is the way you've treated Jesus, He that you've claimed is your Savior), greatly impacted my philosophies. In school, we said the Pledge of Allegiance every day, and I was the one who took it most seriously: 'With Liberty and Justice for All.'

But the Fall of the Berlin Wall was right about the time I was becoming aware of the world around me, and I was intrigued. I saw the rise of Freedom and the fall of fascism, bigotry, and tyranny. And then I saw Operation Desert Storm...... my country bombing another.

As I look back on the fourty years I've lived, and realizing that these fourty are not unique, much of what I see is fighting amongst each other: always wanting to one-up others, and willing to put others down in order to build one's self up. How can it be Freedom to put another down? How can it be Freedom to say a group of people should not be allowed to be themselves? that they shouldn't be granted the same Freedoms to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness that we want for our own lives? A right for one, a Right for All?