Has anybody noticed the strange antics of these shiny black birds that come around each year? Part of them, maybe it’s the males, have a pretty red band on their wings and their song is truly musical, sort of liquid. But, at times, they will stop eating and peer upward. Do they see something I don’t? Are they searching for something? Is this some sort of strange courting ritual? Or did they get a seed stuck in their throat?
Perhaps they are pausing to wonder what’s up with humans. I sometimes wonder too. One thing that is obnoxious to me is the human tendency to categorize each other. Does anybody else grow tired of being called a senior citizen? And how about “baby boomers” and now, “millennials”. (I had to go to the dictionary on that one.) I don’t like being put into a category. As a character on an old television show used to say, “I’m me and you’re you.” Each person is unique. We do not wear rubber stamps. We come into this world as babies, we grow through childhood, teen years, older years, and, we die. We face different challenges, and problems; we are born into varying environments but we all have the same rights, responsibilities, and rewards of being citizens of the greatest country on earth. Each person is unique. No one has a duplicate and we do not fit into one mindless category. We are more than African-American, Chinese-American, Native-American, Irish-American. If we are citizens of the United States of America, we are Americans!
And labels. A dear friend of mine remarked the other day that she is going to stop mentioning the fact that another friend is a widow because that term tends to obscure the wonderful, gifted person she is. I do not like labels. Labels have a way of making the individual just an object to be pigeon-holed under a specific heading. One person may be gifted in a certain area, another person might have wonderful abilities in another field. Some of us have handicaps that are visible; some have handicaps that are not readily visible. Let’s learn to look beyond all the labels and categories and appreciate each other for who we really are.
And those blackbirds? Maybe we should pause and look up too, say a prayer of gratitude for individualism, ask the Lord to help us get rid of categories and labels when we are talking about people, and appreciate each other for who we really are.
Excellent!!
Thanks, Helen.