● Refresh my Memory

Just what did we fight for? Refresh my memory, please. It’s Veterans Day, right?

Women and men spent months, years, or a lifetime protecting this country’s ideals around the world. I was told we were fighting for freedom of choice.

It is ironic that a most conspicuous effort is being made now to eliminate important rights and freedoms here at home. This negative energy is focused like a laser on specific groups to create division and strife. Its only purpose is to deny life – employment, housing, mobility, education, health care services, and justice for the citizens who need them.

The right to vote without undue and unjust interference is the most significant target of all.

Veterans: our past

We held on to the illusion that we have rights and freedom. After all, we enlisted in the military as a courtesy to our elected leaders to back them up. We demonstrated that we could protect the rights of other citizens on this planet – to choose their leaders, to ensure mobility, to protect their voices.

We left, under the flag, our own rights-filled country for a few years to show the world that they can have what we have. Because we knew that fairness resided here and that we would defend anyone else’s right to the same. Yes. That pun was intended.

Can we really say that what we did and have been doing since 1619 was best for the world? When we look at ourselves in that collective mirror of humanity do we see what is right and just? Hmmm. Just asking. Really asking.

Our present

Sadly, many of us, active duty and veterans, are returning home – back to this country – to the land of the what? I don’t recognize the what. We are witnessing, in real time, a nation under attack. The culprits are those who swore to uphold the law but, instead, proved to be lousy stewards of the national trust.

Frankly, it is demoralizing and embarrassing on a global scale.

Veterans Day is not lagniappe

Are the words “thank you for your service” as awkward, empty, and possibly triggering as they sound? A few brave souls, veterans and civilians alike, ask me if it makes me bristle. Yes, it does.

Many veterans would welcome a serious dialogue about lack of child care, homelessness, financial illiteracy, substance abuse, and trauma that we experienced while in service. Now that shows true empathy.

Do we have a little room in our hearts to ask about their hopes and dreams?

Remembering to forget

The same old song, placed on repeat, sung and marched to in cadence replaced common sense. Conventional thinking had us believing that the problems, the origin of the world’s disorder, is somewhere over there.

Truthfully, as a nation, we did it to ourselves. We were wasteful, negligent, indulgent and pitted against each other. We were not watchful of our leaders, our resources, our hearts and minds.

Ironically, twelve percent of the country’s population was considered untrustworthy of bearing arms for this nation. Many in the majority chose naively to believe that we were bent on revenge toward a nation that wronged us. That was a terrible lie.

Our contributions, individually and collectively, officially date back to 1770 in Boston. The cloak of denial and secrecy over our consistent valor and steadfastness was finally removed. Our work and sacrifice continued, now, under an oppressive system of segregation and the terror of lynching.

In spite of that, we did our jobs with competence, dignity, and magnanimity. Still, the privilege to fight as equals was denied until 1951. Then the nation’s leaders, including the president, realized that they couldn’t say “no” any longer.

Let’s fix that

If it was not evident before, doing nothing has its consequences. Ignorance of the facts drives inaction. Ignorance – played on and preyed upon by the thieves of humanity – results in chaos and destruction. Change that with this:

• research,
• common sense,
• critical thinking,
• historical perspective.

We must call each other out to address the problems created with the first “non-native” footstep on this land. Ask questions. Educate yourself and each other as a nation – sister to sister, brother to brother. Don’t be afraid to seek and listen for once without offense to the answers that were never over there, but over here.

Ours, the most educated nation on the planet, is voluntarily transforming into an enormously uncivil, naive, and ugly heap of books, letters, and bricks.

What we are witnessing is intellectual and emotional suicide on the grandest scale in the history of human kind. We are repealing the good we did do in the world. That bit of good is being replaced by actions that could exceed the horrors of the past.

Know who you are

Let’s look each other in the eye and acknowledge that the real danger is within our nation… in ourselves.

The process may not feel good but we must decide who we are and who we want to be. Sincere effort must be made to recognize the answers that have been here all along. Think about that – the answers have been here all along.

They may not be what you want to see or hear but this is the secret: knowing is freedom. Knowledge is power… over yourself. It’s power that allows you to choose. It empowers you to look and act like a genius or a fool.

Most of us exist in an unhappy state lived largely uninformed. Deciding while uninformed (DUI) is how we lose our power. We make decisions that are life defining without real thought or facts.

Some examples from everyday life:

• voting just to say we did but not knowing, really knowing, the candidates,

• not knowing the contract terms on the purchase of a house or car other than the amount of the payments,

• expressing outrage toward dubious offenses but dismissing real cruelty and brutality,

• suspending belief in facts or what you see with your own eyes, then letting others tell you who or what the enemy is.

●

There is power in choosing one’s reaction to events instead of being a victim.

●

Son Brother Friend

He was loved by many in his short time on this earth. We miss him. Since my brother never had that opportunity, I always honor him as one with me on Veterans Day.

From the day he left this earth, my mom kept his memory alive for all of us. As a protective spirit, he didn’t tell her everything he experienced on land or at sea – some of the good and sadly, none of the bad.

My mom loved her son more than she loved herself. I am sure she would have held him and held him… if she could. She would not let him go… until she had to.

I believe that our son, brother, and friend closed his eyes and breathed his last breath with a broken heart.

My mother sensed it.

I don’t think her heart ever could have broken more. 🥀 💔

He is her flower on those millions and millions of stars…

●

Lady Veterans

Welcome back to all the women returning home from our country’s longest war. If you need help, start here. Thank you to ALL the resilient women who continue to influence me by word, deed, how they live and move in the world. I appreciate you.

• It is more than words: say it, then do it. •

You are the expert of your own life.

– Florynce Kennedy
activist and lawyer

Shirley J 🌹