As I observed the people around me in the restaurant Sunday afternoon, I felt annoyed. I didn’t like these people — and I don’t figure they would really like me.
If I described the things I didn’t like about these folks, you would probably feel as though I was being petty. Maybe even judgmental. They didn’t look like me, talk like me, or act like me. Everything about them rubbed me the wrong way.
I feel this way a lot lately. I suspect most Americans feel the same. In our own varied ways, most of us are asking, “How could this be possible in my country?”
Conservatives might look at gay marriage and marijuana legalization and an apparent flood of immigrants in their cities — and wonder what went wrong for the world they believe in. Progressives might look at neo-Nazis marching and “voter suppression” in elections and a flood of hatred for immigrants — and wonder what went wrong for the world they believe in.
In a world where the words and actions of people who disagree with us are slammed into our faces by 24-hour news media, most of us have a vague sense that something’s wrong. Some react by saying, “I want my country back,” but what they’re really saying is what we all feel. We all long for a place that feels like home.
Stop using children as pawns to promote adult political agendas
Shock of seeing ‘Airplane!’ was realizing that I wasn’t all alone
Watching kids on a Friday night reminds me of struggle to belong
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone