Average No More

I used to be as average as it's possible to get.

I was middle aged, average height and weight with mousey brown hair, neither beautiful nor hideous. I was married with two-and-a-half children. (At least that was true statistically since we had one birth child and three foster kids and one plus three halves =2 1/2.)

We were middle income and lived in a medium sized, middle class community in Central California.

But all that has changed.

Now I'm government certified old (in other words I get Social Security,) my hair is turning grey, my kids are all grown and gone, my income is lower, and when my husband retired we moved a small town in Northern California.

But, you know what? I'm still the same person on the inside.

It's so easy to judge people on the basis of how they look, where they live, and how much money they have but none of those things really matter. Everybody knows we shouldn't judge others on the basis of things like race, national origin, or if they have special needs or not, but our society still focuses on things like status symbols to determine people's...well, status.

In many ways our current culture in the USA reminds me of just before the fall of the Roman Empire.

There are millions of people here and in the rest of the world who may not be average or rich, but it's just as wrong to be prejudiced against people who are rich or average, as it is to be prejudiced against people who aren't either of those things. 

It's what's inside each of us that counts. Maybe if we all try to see past the things on the outside and really get to know each other we can help make the world a better place one relationship at a time.

And, yes, maybe I am more optimistic than average. But it can't hurt to try.

All One Family

I've blogged about my strange and extremely extended family before. (If interested you can see those posts here:
http://onwordsblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/extended-family.html
and here:
http://onwordsblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/its-all-relative.html  )

But there's something I've neglected to say: If I can love relatives who have different religious and political views and/or live thousands of miles away so I rarely or never see them, why can't we realize that all human beings are one family and learn to love each other? I'm tired of hearing about wars and rumors of war, people starving or being forced into slavery, and racial or religious prejudices. It's time to stop those things.

Thousands of years ago when humans encountered people who were different from themselves it was usually because the strangers were coming to take their territory and possessions. But, come on, we're not primitive people anymore. Isn't it time we realized we really are all one family? Why can't we learn to get along with each other?

Okay, that's my idealistic vent for the day.