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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Americans have been bombarded by influencers for so long about the evil of others, about disrespect, and with wedge issues designed to drive families and friends further and further apart, that now is definitely the time to take a good look at life from a different perspective.
Perhaps take a leaf from the tenor of the Democratic National Convention and work on expressing positive feelings and empathy for those around us.
Not the happy-happy joy-joy of the new-ager cult experiential explorations, but to genuinely look for the good in people and celebrate getting to really know them, what we share in common as well as appreciating their diverse points of view. Views that while different, should not have to be labeled good or bad.
Remember how so many individuals rose to the occasion to care for their neighbors during Covid, the small kindnesses of an acquaintance walking someone’s dog, bringing soup to the sick, carrying groceries for a mother caring for her sleeping child.
The small gifts shared, even a smile, that bring people’s humanity to the surface.
When we can just be, instead of calculating a cost or justifying the time.
As Pete Buttigieg said at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago:
“My faith teaches me that the world isn't made up of good people and bad people, but rather that each of us is capable of good and bad things. And I believe leaders matter because of what they bring out in each of us, the good or the bad.”
He rejected outright the small-minded divisiveness of those who are:
“...telling you that anyone different from you is a threat... telling you that your neighbor or nephew or daughter who disagrees with you politically isn't just wrong, but is now the enemy.”
He called for a “better politics, one that finds us at our most decent and open and brave, most decent and open and brave” and [to] “embrace the leaders who are out there building bridges and reject the ones who are out there banning books.”
How’s dem apples?
And to take it to the individual, Oprah’s call carried a similar message to the men and women of Main Street:
“People who’d have you believe that books are dangerous and assault rifles are safe, that there’s a right way to worship and a wrong way to love... But here’s the thing: when we stand together, it is impossible to conquer us.”
Inadvertently (and ironically), the sub-titling when I watched, threw in some black humor here: “that there is a white way to worship and a wrong way to love...”
But, if anything, that makes the point more poignant at a time when too many Americans still are not truly free to lead their own lives as they choose.
And Oprah continued:
“...because freedom isn’t free. America is an ongoing project. It requires commitment, it requires being open to the hard work and the heart work of democracy. And every now and then, it requires standing up to life’s bullies.”
Even if that bully inhabits your own home, your own mind.
Face it down, rise to one’s better self and reach out a hand, unconditionally.
Show ourselves and others that when there are people in need, Americans don't ask about race or who people live with, they just help.
Everyone has options. And one is to choose to be one’s better self, as often and as unselfishly as humanly possible.
Choices that have the added benefit of infusing the bestower with genuine happiness.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
