The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth
I saw an article about the sister of a comedian I am
familiar with. Her sister was recently arrested
as she protested sexual inequality in Israel.
It really does not matter who the comedian or her sister are, nor
exactly what she was protesting. What matters is that a simple google search showed me hundreds
and thousands just like her all over the world, from all walks of life, all
ages, body types, religions, races, and national origins. As I looked at all the pictures something about the way I saw them changed.
When I first saw a picture of the two sisters, I thought to
myself how pretty one was compared to the other. Initially I saw the younger, thinner,
longhaired sister as prettier, but then I saw a photo of the older sister
during the protest and I paused for a while to look at her. As I
looked at her noticed something stunning about her, something that transformed
her, and made her so much more beautiful, the same thing was true of the other women in the photos.
I noticed that she had a sense of purpose, a sense of being
part of something much larger than herself, it was almost like an aura, it just radiated from her.
To be honest for the first time in my life I envied something another woman had. As
I looked at picture after picture of women protesting I saw that same raw beauty in
all of them. It really did not matter
what they actually looked like physically, it was irrelevant, regardless of if they were
protesting in the nude, or covered head to foot, with only their eyes showing.
It is a beauty we should spend so much more time on and celebrate, as much as we do mere physical beauty, as this type of beauty is
available to any, male or female, young or old. It can cost nothing,
or it can require from you the ultimate sacrifice.
It is a type of beauty that we are all indebted to, regardless of how
far a way geographically or temporally we my live from the particular
protest.
What is remarkable about these protests is that while the
women in them are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for what they believe
in, what they are asking for often is so very little. They are asking to be able to live their
lives as equals, in the manner of their choosing. They ask to be able to vote, to participate
fully in their societies as equals. They
ask to be given the same opportunities for success as others enjoy in their
societies. They ask to be free from
violence, to have access to education, food, housing and economical success,
They ask simply to be given a chance to work for all of it.
They are often not just asking for themselves, but for those
that have gone before them, for those that are there marching with them and for
the children that have not yet been born, that one day will reap what has been
sown, and will have no idea how much blood was used to fertilize that fruit.
I am grateful to each and every one of them for they are all
fighting for each one of us to be a little freer. A world or a society
enslaved by slavery is not free, that does not treat all its citizens fairly,
is not free, that favors some over others for economic success is not
free. Thus each victory by a single protest brings all of us
closer to freedom. It is true that some
protests have had less than virtuous reasons, that some have resulted in less
freedom for some, rather than more for all.
But I think, perhaps because I am an optimist, that the vast majority of
protests through out time have made the world a better place to live for all. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and as I
looked through those photographs I saw a beauty that I had been blind to for quite a
while now.
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