NOT ENOUGH

NOT ENOUGH

Yesterday I heard a song I hadn’t listened to since I was a kid way back in the ‘70s, and for some reason it means a lot more to me now than it did all those years ago.

Let’s face it, folks; this world is divided, this country is divided, and because of a recent election (in my opinion), neighbors, friends, and even families are divided. There is growing sense of unease across this planet, and I personally don’t think it’s going to get any better.

I was born in 1965 and grew up through the ‘70s, and although I was a little young to experience ‘The Summer of Love’, I know now that times were a lot — how should I say this? — kinder, I guess, for lack of a better word. At least as compared to what the world is going through now. And that’s even considering that we were still fighting a war in Vietnam that the government refused to call a war and instead terming it ‘A Police Action’.

My point is that times have changed drastically in the last 50 years. The days of Leave it to Beaver and The Brady Bunch are no more. No longer can parents let their children go to the park or send them to the store for a loaf of bread without worrying that they could be abducted (or worse). No longer can families go to bed without their doors and windows locked tight. No longer can people send their kids to school without the fear of another Columbine tragedy, or go to a theater, or even to their own Church because some mentally unstable person might take out his hostility on innocent victims of a different race.

Now it’s 2017, almost 50 years after ‘The Summer of Love’, and the world is filled with fear and hate, and each of them are feeding off of the other. I’m not saying we were all innocent at one time, but what innocence we once had is now gone.

Will it ever return, or at least some of it?

I don’t know.

But I do know this.

If there’s anybody out there reading this, do something to help push it along. The next time you’re walking down the street and you see somebody approaching from the opposite direction, smile. Or better yet, ask them, “How are you today?”

I can’t tell you how many times a simple smile and those four little words have changed my day from dark and overcast to sunny and bright!

The next time you’re in an elevator with a complete stranger, don’t just stand there silently as you wait for your floor. Compliment them on something! Even if you don’t really mean it!

Oh. And that song I heard yesterday? It was Dionne Warwick’s, What the world needs now/ is love, sweet love.

I think that says it all, don't you?