ANOTHER RYAN: RYAN STEVENS, TRACY
Today I received a note from a newsgroup friend, Deborah Littleton. The note contained this letter to the editor.
Tracy Press/ Wednesday, 25 April 2007
A letter from Ryan Stevens
EDITOR,
It’s hard to watch or read the news. It seems the whole world is aflame in bombings, massacres, shootings and unavoidable global tension. Even locally, it is impossible to escape the news of possible or impending calamity when we hear about local schools being locked down as a reaction to violent threats. I thought about why all of this is a reality while walking around town Friday, and I noticed how some people avert their glances away from anyone in an attempt to avoid exchanging a simple hello with a passerby.
All of this got me thinking. We’re all so horribly disconnected from each other. We’re all so fragmented. We divide ourselves along lines of faith, politics, geography and social class, and these lines seem to grow deeper and with more breadth, becoming increasingly more violent and full of invective as the days go by. And instead of celebrating and embracing our differences, we accentuate them and denounce others in an attempt to make ourselves look better by approximation.
Why can’t we all see that we can be united in our differences When you think of it, we are all similar in the fact that we are all flawed, we all have dreams and we all want to be happy.
Our flaws are forever confronting us. That’s life. Some people react to this by acknowledging their flaws and trying to better themselves. Others try to obscure their flaws by drawing attention to the flaws of others, cutting someone else down in an attempt to make one’s self appear taller. For far too long, we have been cutting each other down, leaving all of us stunted in the process.
It is time to end the fragmentation. It is time that we, as a community — whether it be a community in the sense of a city or a nation, a church or simply as human beings en masse — join to form a bond.
It is time we lifted each other rather than aiding in the collective fall.
Ryan Stevens, Tracy
What if we shared Ryan Stevens' words with as many people as possible?
-------------------------------
"The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another." -- Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut
Tracy Press/ Wednesday, 25 April 2007
A letter from Ryan Stevens
EDITOR,
It’s hard to watch or read the news. It seems the whole world is aflame in bombings, massacres, shootings and unavoidable global tension. Even locally, it is impossible to escape the news of possible or impending calamity when we hear about local schools being locked down as a reaction to violent threats. I thought about why all of this is a reality while walking around town Friday, and I noticed how some people avert their glances away from anyone in an attempt to avoid exchanging a simple hello with a passerby.
All of this got me thinking. We’re all so horribly disconnected from each other. We’re all so fragmented. We divide ourselves along lines of faith, politics, geography and social class, and these lines seem to grow deeper and with more breadth, becoming increasingly more violent and full of invective as the days go by. And instead of celebrating and embracing our differences, we accentuate them and denounce others in an attempt to make ourselves look better by approximation.
Why can’t we all see that we can be united in our differences When you think of it, we are all similar in the fact that we are all flawed, we all have dreams and we all want to be happy.
Our flaws are forever confronting us. That’s life. Some people react to this by acknowledging their flaws and trying to better themselves. Others try to obscure their flaws by drawing attention to the flaws of others, cutting someone else down in an attempt to make one’s self appear taller. For far too long, we have been cutting each other down, leaving all of us stunted in the process.
It is time to end the fragmentation. It is time that we, as a community — whether it be a community in the sense of a city or a nation, a church or simply as human beings en masse — join to form a bond.
It is time we lifted each other rather than aiding in the collective fall.
Ryan Stevens, Tracy
What if we shared Ryan Stevens' words with as many people as possible?
-------------------------------
"The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another." -- Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut
posted by José Angel Santana, Ph.D. at 4:52 PM
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