Dear American Public,

I’m writing this letter as a plea. 

A plea for unity, collaboration, problem solving. 

A plea for kindness, love, and light. 

A plea for understanding, learning, and integrity. 

A plea for education, intelligence, and honesty.

A plea to stop the use of degradation, mockery, and misinformation by means to “win”. 

If you attended a public school in our country, I know you were taught about research and understanding, justice and humanness, history and patterns of repetition, literature and character development, language and communication, conflict and self regulation- but did you really learn it? I know I learned hard and fast lessons on those school grounds and I was led by adults that were good humans. And I remember when I went to school more years ago than I’d like to admit, we were better than this. 

We were taught in our education system that “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” and while that may hold a light of truth, the reality is that language is the entire basis of our life systems. Language and words are so powerful that we forget the importance of using words to match what we mean. We say one thing out of our mouths but our actions are showing us to be someone we are not. Now more than ever in this time of “real time” news and information, we are now desensitized to the power of words. 

At present, words are intentionally being used to degrade, dehumanize, polarize, and manipulate us- as they have since the beginning of time. Propaganda is always the first step in a coercion for evil, making one group believe that they are better than another. Using words, images, and brain programming to create a superiority complex because once people feel superior, they feel they have the right to treat others poorly. The Stanford Prison experiment is a great short term experiment using regular, everyday people in order to showcase to the world how power and control can make even the kindest people become someone they are not. 

On a larger scale, we’ve seen a variety of past human wrongdoings sparking from this mentality, the assertion of power over someone else because you believe yourself to be better or superhero. There is not one human on this earth who is better than another- I said what I said- we’ve all fallen short and we’ve all hurt others. Manipulating 3 people to believe your lie about another person in competition with you is the same act as a man manipulating an entire nation.

We were led to believe that we are the best country on this earth just “because we said so”, a method of parenting that proves no value in human development. If our words don’t match our actions, we are not being true to who we are. Who we are is what we do, not what we say we do. And it seems we forgot that we need to be good people in order to be a good country. We aren’t the best country until we have the best people- so look inside and ask yourself: Am I showing up to be the best human I can today and operating with good intentions?  How am I contributing to the general populice?

Because my observation is that we, the adult people of America, are not being good humans. Being human is our number one job and I think we’ve lost sight of that.

So, let’s apply the sticks and stones theory to our labels and make it easier to be human. 

Let’s agree that we are mammals with hearts, feelings, intuition, beliefs, ideas, and intentions. 

Let’s understand how vulnerable we are to information considering how much of it we get every second of every day. 

Let’s disconnect from social media and reconnect with our humanness. 

Let’s work to listen to understand. 

Let’s work to challenge without insulting.

Let’s work to ask questions without assumptions.

Let’s work to cohabitate instead of control.

Let’s work to make humankind great again.

Sincerely,

a disheartened woman who is working endlessly to do what she can to heal herself in a world that’s lost its way