more unity

Growing up, my brother and I weren’t the worst kids, but we also weren’t the best. We fought with each other, locked each other out of the bathroom, and broke a few things around the house. One time while we were declaring war in the basement by throwing foam building blocks at each other, we ended up breaking a vase. Rather than admitting to our mom that we broke the vase, we chose to attempt fixing the vase with superglue. The vase was only broken on one side, so we figured we could maybe get away with it. We glued it together the best we could and then turned the broken side away from being easily viewed.

I’d like to say that this logic worked out for us, but it didn’t. Our mom eventually found out, and she wasn’t very pleased. My brother and I aren’t the only kids that probably did something similar to this, and we probably also aren’t the only ones who tried to avoid having the tough conversation of admitting we made a mistake. In fact, I think this fear of conversation stretches through all of our lives, no matter how young or old we are, in a lot of situations.

We can also find ourselves thinking it’s fine to hide the broken half as long as the side we see is still put together, just like the vase. Doing this only prolongs the inevitable, though. My brother and I thought that whatever we did with the vase didn’t matter that much, so why spend too much time thinking about it? After all, we weren’t really affected by the broken vase, because it wasn’t ours. However, I’m almost positive if my brother and I had broken one of our favorite toys, we would’ve worked to fix it, instead of just gluing and hiding.

This past week, I’ve learned how important it is the not let myself, or others, think that what is happening in our world does not involve every single one of us. I will never know the struggle, pain, and hurt of people of color in our country, but that will never be an excuse to not step up to learn, listen, and be better.

I’ve wondered how my words could ever be useful to bring unity in our world that is divided in so many ways right now. I’ve questioned my ability to ever say the right things. I realized though, that it will never be my words or actions that unify because unity is not about me. Unity is not just about “you”, “me”, or “them”. Unity is about us. My words alone don’t change everything, but it takes all of us to create unity in places where being divided hurts more than it heals.

Unity is about coming together even when our thoughts and opinions don’t always align perfectly. Isolating ourselves into groups that think and believe similarly will never create change. It will only create a greater gap that will continue to divide us. We don’t expect ourselves to know everything, so why should we expect others to quickly understand when they have lived different lives than us, and experienced different things?

Now, more than ever, I feel like there truly is more to it all. There is so much more to what is happening than what we see directly in our lives because it is way bigger than me and you. There is more to this situation than any one person could ever fully understand, but that is why there is always more to be understood. There is more listening for each of us to do. There is more for us to experience. There is so much more to talk about, and a lot more action to be taken.

At the end of the day, unity is loving others and wanting to fight for others even if you are not directly affected. I know that I’ll never be able to fully understand, but I will love, learn, and listen.

There’s more to unity.

There’s more to it all.