It’s September 5, 2013…Do You Know Where Your Humanity Is?

Every morning I have a routine. I get my coffee, get on my computer, and I check Facebook. The first thing I do is glance at a little sidebar on the right that tells me which of my “friends” are on line, and which ones were recently, by minutes and hours. The first name I am looking for is Josiah Markiewicz. That’s Private First Class Josiah Markiewicz to you. To me, he’s Si…my son.  He’s somewhere in Afghanistan, and pictures like these are pictures that will give a mothers heart a new meaning to the word anxiety. 

A fortunate thing I have today, that my mother and grandmothers didn’t have when my dad was in Korea, is the internet. It’s sporadic and delayed, but it’s there, and if he’s been on, I know he’s okay. Sometimes we message – but he can only say so much. Today, the message was, “Hey Mom, still alive”. 

I hope you are getting a picture here…an emotion…a feeling. I hope you feel me here in the most literal sense. That feeling you are hopefully having is your HUMANNESS. It is the highest order of our lives. It is the very essence of US…what we find when we peel away layers and layers of labels. When we peel off our social and financial statuses, our careers, our educations and the letters that accompany them; when we lay aside our political biases, our neighborhood location, and our prejudices; when we step away, however briefly, from our religious beliefs, spiritual practices, cultural norms and nationalistic pride…at the end of the day, and in the face of having your children in harm’s way…WE ARE ALL HUMAN. 

And in the purity of your humanity, you stand naked. Nothing to hide behind. Here is both our vulnerability and our strength. Vulnerable, because you are open to the pain of living and loving. This is life, and people get hurt, sick and die, and we, at this level feel it. Oh, we try like hell to avoid it, drown it, drug it, deny it, delay it…but that just hurts worse. Yet this is our strength. A gift denied other life forms on the planet. They know not compassion as we do. It is the link that connects us all. It’s the spirit that created our innate desire to connect, and manifested clearly in the invention of the airplane, the car, the telephone, the radio, the television and the internet. And this is the level I wish to connect with you on today. 

We have a situation here on the planet, and at the level of humanity, we need to ask ourselves some questions. Specific to this writing, but applicable to any similar situation, I am referring to Syria. 

Briefly, it’s September 9, 2013. Syria has been having a civil war for quite a while. One party has used chemical weapons, resulting in loss of human life. For reasons we need to determine amongst ourselves, the United States of America has stated that it needs to “send a message” to whomever has done this with a “limited strike” involving our military, because it is our “obligation” to do so. 

Questions to ask in the context of this information:

1.   How do we determine WHO the good guys and the bad guys are in a CIVIL war? Each party has a point of reference that makes sense to them within their culture…which is important to understand is quite different than ours here, and few of us honestly understand.

2.   WHY do we have to determine this? Why is this our business?

3.   What is the difference between an acceptable weapon and an unacceptable one? More importantly, what is the purpose of a weapon?

4.   What “message” are we sending?

5.   What is a “strike”?

6.   What is the outcome we are hoping for?  

Bear in mind, now, we are talking about this in the raw. No argument can be made which includes a label, such as political orientation, national security, or even political agenda. These have no bearing in the minds and hearts of a person who is in their humanness. When you are holding the form of a dying loved one, or watching them struggle in pain, struggling to breathe, fighting to hold on to life, there are no good guys or bad guys. There is only the Love of this One. 

In fact, to hear someone blathering on about political motives, punitive military practices and an obligation to hurt more people is the height of insult to your grieving ears. And the very person talking would be silenced to his own rhetoric should the dying person be someone he loves deeply. Suddenly, nothing would matter to them either, but the Love of the One. 

This is where we are all the same, and every person who has suffered their humanity at the hand of violence. Regardless of our geographical location, culture, nation, religion, or title.

At a human level, we don’t do this to each other. Just because you slap on a moral, religious or political motive, a country border or a culture does not and never will make it right in the human being. 

We are all connected in this way. Every woman holding a dying child is me. We feel the same. Every man burying his wife or son is YOU burying your wife or son. Every human being knows innately, at the core of his soul, that hurting and killing each other is not the way it’s supposed to be, or the way it could have been. 

If you can see ANY validation for the use of military weapons here, please…ask yourself what label has required you to dismiss your humanity in order to validate it. Is it because you are American? Or Syrian? Is it because you are a republican or a democrat? A rebel or a loyalist? And then ask yourself if this belief in your label is really working for you as a human, and is it working for your fellow humans as well? Can you stand in the mirror of the face of the grieving mother and justify the death of her child with your label? Could anyone ever justify the death of your child to you – to your face – with a label?  Just because we deliver our label-justification via the impersonal media and political rhetoric does not make it acceptable. That is just one more attempt to usurp the humanity at the core of the issue. 

While it would be frighteningly easy to do, I am not going to even suggest a solution to this. I am only going to encourage you to look within yourself, ignore your labels, feel the feelings of your fellow human family members outside of THEIR labels, and live your life according to what you find there.