Doctor Grandma

We recently moved to inner city Columbia. We are happy here. If you go downtown and turn left on Main, everyone you see has darker skin tone than me. There are certain areas and streets we avoid, and wouldn’t walk down at night, but it’s okay. We hear ambulance sirens and trains, a hospital is a few blocks away, as well as a number of colleges, including two historical black ones and a women’s college. It is South Carolina after all, and still very segregated. Though many would like to take it down, the Confederate flag still flies directly in front of the Statehouse. Our Governor declines free Federal money to help build our schools into more than they are now, it doesn’t hurt her children or other upper class families because their kids attend private schools, and life goes on, segregated by choice for those who can afford it.

Just shopped around for car insurance.

Until you have been through a situation where you have faced an absolute injustice, it is difficult to understand that the world is not built upon fairness. We are so nieve. We think ourselves so powerful. We need to become more wise. The world is not set up upon the principle of fairness in practice. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be able to stick their foot in their mouth; decide between right and wrong; feel jealousy. The world is set up so that people can hurt and harm one another. This does not mean they are not responsible for the wrongs that they commit. It just means that they have a choice. If they make a bad decision and treat another with injustice, they will someday know this, and feel shame. It doesn’t matter if it is in this world or the next. They will know all that they have done. And by that time, it is too late to make amends.

If you are the one wronged, you have the choice to live with anger, or live with acceptance of the Will of God working in the world. If you are able to release the anger, then a greater good comes from it. You understand walking through the pain; you feel closer to God; and you accept, that no matter how people treat you, whether it is fairly or unjustly, what matters is living with integrity. And that is something that no one anywhere has the power to take from you. That is between yourself – and God. There is only One who I am in this world to please. That is all I am responsible for, that is all I have the power to control, and that is all that matters.

“Bring thyself to account each day, ere thou art summoned to a reckoning. For death, unheralded, shall come upon you, and you shall be called to account for thy days.” — Baha’u’llah.