Form Two Lines Please

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Can you wring water from a turnip? That phrase can be used two ways. It can imply that you are simply very frugal, or it can imply that you can drain every last drop out of something.

In our world today there are the gimme folks, the ones who are out to get everything they can, figuring if it is there, it is theirs for the taking. These people know every in and out in Government tax right offs, breaks and hand outs. It doesn't matter which end of the income spectrum they are on, they don't leave one drop for anyone else if they can get it first. They aren't much for sharing anything. They work for themselves.

Then there are the other gimme folks, the ones who say: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" That might sound familiar to you. It should. It is a poem by Emma Lazarus mounted on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty and it speaks to a different mind set.

These two groups are not divided by how rich they are, or how good a pedigree they have. It is not the car they drive, nor the clothes they wear that sets them apart. It is not the size of their bank accounts, nor lack of that same thing. It is a mind set that says everyone who thinks they are better than everyone else stand over here and everyone who really believes we are all one family, stand over here.

Of course most people will say they are the latter group, but don't listen to what they say. Look at what they do. There are a million excuses for taking more than your share, or believing your share should be greater than others. Most of them put you in the first group.

I say that as long as one child goes to bed hungry, or one man doing his best has no place to sleep, or one woman doing her best cannot get the medical care she needs, this world is running lopsided and we all need to step back and reassess who we are and how we express it.