"I Have a Dream...."

I remember exactly where I was when I found out that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot.... in a high school English class. Our teacher was up in the front of the room writing book suggestions on the blackboard, and there was a knock on the door. One of the other teachers was going to each classroom, telling the teachers about the shooting.

Before the door to our classroom was closed again, our teacher had tears streaming down her face. She walked from the door to the other side of the room, and looked out of the window. Turning back towards the class, she told us what had happened. A very audible gasp came from all of us.

The 1960s was such an upside-down decade. All those shootings.... J.F.K., Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King.  We were surrounded by death statistics with the Vietnam war going on... students who had graduated from our high school went into the military and then we were reading their names on lists of MIAs and POWs. And the "Rest In Peace" list seemed to get longer every week.

Maybe we were all living in a peaceful bubble in the 1950s.... mostly everyone seemed to be content and happy. The next decade changed all of that.  We came face to face with social mistakes and disrespect, and after Dr. King and the Kennedys were killed, it was hoped that everyone in this country would come to realize that all of us, all of us, have just this one planet to share.

In some ways, with some people, Dr. King's dream has been taken to heart. In other places, with other people, it's as if those assassinations weren't wake-up calls at all.

We're all in this life together, people, on just this one planet.... and the Earth is not as big as you think. Whatever you do, whether it be kindness or cruelty, becomes a thread that wraps itself around and around each and every one of us.

And think of this:  where would you rather spend all the days of your life?  Under a bright and colorful rainbow filled with love?  Or in a deep dark hole filled with hate?