The start of another new week.

I have been waking up each morning and staying in bed for an extra 5-10 minutes to thank God (in my belief system) for my health, my family, my purpose, and asking for strength to face whatever hardship I may be asked to face in the upcoming day and week. I have found this to be helpful, comforting, and guiding.

We are being challenged. On occasion I read the postings on the website/app Nextdoor. Sometimes I am mortified by what I read and other times, I see the beauty in humanity. It appears the divisiveness that is being stoked by our government from the highest office is trickling down into the daily posting and musings of my neighbors. It shocks me to see people being so very “holier than thou,” and I wonder where this comes from? It appears over the past 5-ish years people have felt that their voices need to be “heard” at whatever cost. I am not sure if this is related to the increased influence of social media platforms, but I suspect it is. I just have questions of who do we want to be as a collective group of humans? I have long subscribed to the notion that “We all do better when we all do better (Paul Wellstone).” I have been thinking more and more about the idea of individualistic and collectivist cultures and what this significance is in the time of a very divided nation. I will go into this more in a future post, but it has been on my mind watching people tout their beliefs of personal freedoms wielding guns and forgoing masks to make a point that they government cannot dictate how they live or infringe on their personal freedoms. I struggle with this because I believe in my heart that we accomplish more together if we see a common humanity rather than this is all about me as an individual and not, how can we look out for each other.