Driving always gets me thinking.
I drove to Bowling Green on Tuesday for my BlueCotton internship training.
It poured the whole way back, but that meant that I had to drive a lot slower than normal, so I got to think a lot.
I got to thinking about how beautiful the world is, how beautiful my friends are, and especially how beautiful life is. Sure, there are days when I'm just plain crabby because I can be, but the majority of the time, I see the world we live in as something magical. Wearing my glasses helps this as well, because everything is crisp and fresh-looking.
I can't wait for this weekend to get here. I'm going home to go to Pride Festival in Tower Grove Park! I love all my gay and lesbian friends and can't wait to go support them. It's a shame that not everyone supports them, but it's awesome that the can have a weekend just to shove it in those ignorant people's faces. We celebrate freedom and tolerance.
If tolerance was something that everyone had, we would have so much more peace in this world. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to agree with someone else's beliefs or life choices, but it means that you will support that their views are different than yours and they have the right to have them. You support that they believe in something.
Maybe I'm not going to go out and make out with a girl (not that I haven't), but I support that girls can be intimate with each other if they want to. This goes for so many other instances in life as well... I love people of difference races, even though they are different than mine. I love people of different religions, even though I do not share the same beliefs/practices. I love those with mental disabilities, even though they think different than I. I have tolerance. I may not believe in all the partying and obsessive drinking that goes into many college students, but I respect that it is their choice to make. I realize that the world isn't black and white. It doesn't have a "right way" or a "wrong way". Plus, people aren't black and white either. Maybe they have some beliefs that you don't agree with, but I'm sure there are other things that the both of you have in common that they are also made up of. We aren't just 3-D beings, but honestly, we have hundreds of dimensions. Maybe she's a Buddhist, writer, painter, singer who happens to also believe in women's rights just as much as you do. Maybe he's a African American lawyer who has adopted 6 Muslim children from Afghanistan, but also he's into rebuilding victorian houses just as much as his neighbor. Do these things in common make these people friends? No, not necessarily, but it should make them tolerant. It should make them see that these people are also humans and have the right to lead their lives in the way they choose, and they should respect that.
I would love to write forever about this, but it's time for my 8 hour shift at the pool! Oh joy! :D
I'll write soon.
