Fighting Injustice

Today I saw the movie Just Mercy with one of my sons and it was incredible and powerful and riveting! It made me think about injustice. The show is about one injustice and each of us is exposed to countless injustices in different areas over time.

I believe every person on the earth is compelled to fight some kind of injustice in their life. We all fight for different things. For instance, my neighbor has 3 kids who have been harmed by vaccines so she fights for the right to choose whether or not to vaccinate our kids and she cares about other things, but that is the injustice she invests the most resources into.

The injustice I feel most compelled to fight is our education system. I feel strongly, do all I can to stay up-to-date on changes in the system, and even choose political candidates based most strongly on their views and plans for education. I fight for my own children by always providing them alternatives. They have used public school, homeschool, a charter school, online schools, packets, and a hybrid of options and I'm always open to tweaking things if what they try doesn't work. I talk to them all the time about what education really means and refuse to accept somebody else completely defining it for us or forcing us to do it a certain way.

I feel like I fight the education injustice in society by substitute teaching in my district. Getting into the classrooms allows me to get an up-front seat to what's really going on and it allows me small moments to make things better or offer encouragement or teach students new ways to do things or reasons to do things they don't want to do. Many students are not receptive and many moments in a classroom are not golden opportunities for progress but the golden opportunities don't come without the days that it seems like a hopeless road.

Other people fight other injustices: in the legal system, with foster care, in the growth and development of cities, and in hundreds of other ways. Some people are born with disabilities that render them unable to talk or unable to move and even they fight the injustice of those who judge them too quickly.

You don't have to use words to fight an injustice. It can be done in many ways. Some people do feel compelled at one point and choose not to do anything about it. That is a choice they get to make. However, if we each take up one problem we see and work to improve it, that can make a difference. The other thing I couldn't stop thinking about is this: Is life fair in heaven? We struggle greatly here & we all see things that just aren't right!!! It's hard to imagine a time when all the things that aren't right end but wouldn't all the people in heaven have pure & good motives? Is that enough to end injustice? I would imagine everybody is educated enough that racism is over, sexism is over, greed & selfishness should be over. A cutthroat mentality is over. Striving to be accepted and to have needs met would be over.

I believe that injustice would be over but there are so many factors we swim in here that it's hard to imagine a time or place where all of those factors disappear and justice prevails. But if does feel good to take a few moments and imagine a time and place where all the injustices of human existence disappear and love, justice, & beauty prevail!

Manly

An idea that I've seen surface a lot in the last 1-2 years is what it means to be a man or to be manly. Part of my family & I just finished the 4th season of 60 Days In. There are several instances between the father, Matt, & his son, Andrew, that kind of address the idea of what it means to be a man. The dad clearly thinks it means a certain thing and the son thinks it means another and there's a change in the dad's thinking after the show and during a later discussion.

A discussion started at our house and included my daughter's boyfriend, who immediately claimed nobody sees him and thinks he's manly. He asked me if I did and I said I actually do because being manly is just being a man but trying to be responsible about it. Who's not manly? Somebody who rapes or somebody who abuses and manipulates others. Somebody who doesn't play sports though, is not immediately unmanly. They just have their own interests. Somebody who isn't big or can't win a fight can still be manly. I used to think some of those things weren't manly but they were still acceptable. It takes time to change our perception and sometimes we do kind of make judgments that are not in line with the ways we try to progress. I hope to see perspectives in general open up to a broader and more humane version of what it means to be manly.