I refuse

Like many of you, I saw those photos today. Pictures of that young lad, washed up on the shore of a Turkish beach. I'm generally unsentimental, but those pictures were a kick to the guts to me. I'm not going to share the pictures here; you can find them if you want. 

But in the shock of the moment, it made me think. I'm going to get a little deep. Sorry about that.

When I'm around other people and see or hear their thoughts, in the real world and online, I notice that many of them seem to get their opinions from certain newspapers and outlets. It saddens me.

Of all the things that people could do with their time, particularly when they could read millions of things for free, they read the Daily Mail or similar. And they believe it all, too.

The headlines these days are simply generic immigrant/asylum seeker/refugee/welfare claimant hate pieces. Every day, the media screams hatred. “It’s the Muslims, it’s the immigrants, it’s the poor, they’re a swarm, they’re a burden, a drain.

This drip, drip, drip of scaremongering and hatred poisons us. No matter how immune or clever we think we are, we’re all vulnerable to it. We are all human beings, after all.

However, not enough of us question the constant drip of this awful hate mongering and we need to do that. If we as a species cannot be compassionate towards ourselves, towards the disenfranchised and disempowered, towards the planet, it’s over.

I refuse to hate refugees. I refuse to hate suffering families. I refuse to hate Muslims or Jews or Christians or Americans or Europeans or Africans or Arabs.

I refuse to hate you. I refuse to hate the poor. I refuse to hate the rich. I refuse to hate animals. I refuse to hate the planet.

I refuse to hate myself. I refuse to hate people of a different colour or sexual orientation or body size.

I refuse to be brainwashed by the hate mongers and headline writers.

Compassion. Mercy. That is what I believe in. I see good people all around me. 

Send a signal, read something else.