Living Life for the Greater Good

Some of us prefer, or get, a simple life fraught with no more danger than relatively minor or unlikely fears – perhaps just missing being in a car accident or having “difficult” family members. Forget about real fear. The kind where you push someone aside to save them and hope the car doesn’t hit you. Or you stand in line with protestors who are fighting for peace while there are guns pointed at you. Or being an African American child who walks through aggressive lines of hateful people to be the first to attend an all-white school – how that mother must have feared for her child's life. But she did it afraid and opened that door of freedom a little wider for the rest of us. Who wants to choose that kind of life? But there are those who do it afraid – brave sparks of humanity who reach out and touch the world with truths it does not want to see or fight for the rights of oppressed people. Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi to name a few (there are thousands upon thousands of these brave hearts). There are tons of people who most of us would not recognize their names because they were smaller, less significant elements in their battle for good and justice – or were “buried” in the long line of heroes because they were women or the wrong color. Or none of us ever heard of them because they did a heroic deed silently, so it was never recorded. They are all heroes in my eyes for fighting for the greater good. A fearsome life often weighed down with danger and sacrifice. Martin Luther King's name bears repeating, not just because we are familiar with him (or his birthday is a national holiday this coming week), but because he was a man of great courage and conviction. Not afraid or perhaps afraid, but willing to let his fear be secondary in his promotion of peace. I can see this because my life is one of the more ordinary lives whose worst part of life so far has been personal heartbreak, struggling to maintain a good life for my family and myself, or health issues. Yet I will touch plenty of people on the trek of an ordinary life – and how shall I touch them?  With my good qualities or my bad? We all have potential for both. Let’s try to stand up for what is right, but not to damage others along the way in our mission. And let’s try to be the best we can be to be an example and a help to others.

(Artist is Carol Ann Briske - my mother)

Artist: Carol Ann Briske