This weekend, my first friend from kindergarten posted something I thought was incredibly intolerant about not making Muslims in American feel comfortable. I generally don't comment on anything political on Facebook unless fact checking shows that it is false. But this one struck me as as being extremely unChristian from someone who regularly posts about being Christian. I reacted and I stuck to my never supporting intolerance or violence guns (metaphorical guns of course). The exchanged ended with her telling me to Get Lost and unfriending me. This was perfectly fine as I had come to the conclusion that I had put up with enough hate filled posts and that I don't need to have hers or anyone else's come across my feed.
I know, although I don't understand why that hate persists. Twenty years after the fact, I am still overwhelmed with emotion from my experience at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. As an American living in Hiroshima, I came to the understanding that the bomb was what people do to people. Everyone was looking for the technology, Russians, Germans, Japanese--everyone. It was a given that whoever developed the viable technology first was surely going to use it. Hiroshima could have been Paris, Moscow, Beijing, London or San Francisco. So the past weighed on me as a human but not as an American.
I had lived in Hiroshima for several years before I went to the Peace Museum. I know what people do to people and felt that I didn't need that particular dose of humanity. It was as a host to a visiting friend that I finally went through the museum. It was as I expected, artifacts of horror and destruction. Evidence that man is a sophisticated warring chimpanzee rather than an enlightened human. But I held it together, I was seeing what I expected, nothing more. I did not linger, so I ended up waiting for my friend for a while at the end. It was here that I came unglued. In the last room before the exit, there were two guest comment books. One was under glass and dedicated to dignitaries and other notables. The other was for everyone else. I flipped a page back and saw the following entry: Muertos de los todos Americanos written by someone from Brazil. Here was where I lost all hope for humanity. The fact that someone, anyone could look upon image after image of the horror of what people do to people and still want to kill people, sent a dagger through my heart. My friend found me in tears, the same tears that I am shedding now and every time, I recall the experience. In truth, I have never fully recovered from that experience. When I see hate and intolerance with out understanding that we are all human, I wonder if the pockets of oppression and lawlessness will spread to encompass us all.
I take comfort that the world is a better, safer, more humane place today than it was 100 years ago, but that could change in a heartbeat unless we all practice love and compassion, tolerance and openness. I am realistic, I know that there are people who will never change, I know that there are people are are truly evil, but laws and social mores have restrain the baser warring chimp in us and allow the better human side of us shine through. It is only through love and compassion as the Dalai Lama says above that we will thrive giving our future generations hope.
Note: In case you are wondering. I'm not Buddhist but I do have tremendous respect for the Dalai Lama. I see him as a calm voice of reason swirling in the turmoil of modern society. With my years in Japan and practicing tea ceremony, I appreciate the aspects of Buddhism that focus on being present while living life in harmonious balance.