What type of American will you choose to be?
In view of the increasing focus on next year’s elections, the commencement address given at Harvard this year by Tom Hanks was remarkable and memorable.
The challenge he offered to the graduates was in this statement: “Every day, every year, and for every graduating class, there is a choice to be made. It’s the same option for all grown-ups, who have to decide to be one of three types of Americans: those who embrace liberty and freedom for all, those who won’t, or those who are indifferent.”
This choice faces all of us. (The Washington Post article in describing Hanks’ speech pointed out that Elie Wiesel had said that “the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.”)
So, it could be said we all (not just graduates) have these three choices about what kind of American to be. We can choose to want liberty and freedom for all (no matter their country of origin or skin tone or their sense of personal identity). Or we can choose to not want liberty and freedom for people from certain countries and who have a certain skin tone and a sense of identity, we don’t approve of or are afraid of.
The choice is ours - to be prejudiced against, and even hate, some people, rather than believe with the country’s founders that “All men are created equal” and to believe with the majority of world religions that all men are brothers and that love is better than hate.
Common sense, which does not seem to be so common today, tells us that all people share the same types of blood, that even our digestive systems are the same, and certainly that we all want respect and the ability to earn a decent living for our families, as well as to love and be loved for who we are, not someone else’s idea of who they think we are.
Sadly, it is fear that is the breeding ground for prejudice and hatred.
The Surgeon General has identified loneliness as a factor for the unhealthy behavior of many people today. We have not had the many advantages of social interaction for the past several years. We may have even lost some social skills and it will take time and effort to recover them. We really do need other humans in order to be more human ourselves. Blanket prejudice and hatred of other people does not make sense if we want a healthy society.
Art, music, dance, gym, social studies, the art of debate, history, all help to humanize us. Bonding with electronic devices out of necessity during the COVID-19 plague has tended to separate and isolate both teens and adults. Our children, and we ourselves, need to get back to interacting in person and to having the outlets of music, art, dance, gym, social studies, debate, and history, all of which humanize us.
Virginia M. Jones is a longtime Oak Ridge resident.
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: What type of American will you choose to be?
