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What the World Needs Now
“What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” For years I’ve awakened to a song playing in my head, but it wasn’t about love, it was about “Eve of Destruction”. When I woke up this morning, Sunday, the song about destruction wasn’t gone—it was competing with the song about love. We’ve all had “ear worms”. Haven’t we? It’s not a new phenomenon, the “ear worm”. I have often started a column with a quote from the P.F. Sloan song from the mid-sixties when the world seemed to be teetering on the edge of destruction. In the ’60s I was a peace-loving, longhaired hippy weirdo when Eve of Destruction was a hit tune. And, I was a teenager during the Summer of Love. I truly believed I could join forces with like-minded individuals to solve all of the world’s problems spreading a peace message by singing protest songs, “making love, not war”, flashing the peace sign and whining about social injustices. I was young. I was naive. I hadn’t any background in politics, I knew nothing of oligarchs or billionaires or megalomaniacs—or life for that matter. I thought looking the peaceful part and mumbling words of wisdom was all the world needed. I didn’t know how to put my power/my money/my vote where my mouth was. I didn’t know I had any of power at my disposal. Today, I’m still a bit delusional and long-haired and peace-loving, and I might even be a hippy weirdo. But today I better understand what the world needs now. The world doesn’t need “more” of anything except education, involvement and respect for the differences of others. We have to demonstrate empathy by being loving and respectful and, most of all, we have to make sure our elected officials are listening to us by doing the right thing. It sounds simple enough, but my long hair is grey and I’ve done a bit of reading and I’ve watched the broadcast news and I’ve seen the pain and suffering. We change for a little while and then we go back to our old ways of indulgence, intolerance and indifference.
It’s Sunday, and here we all are with all of the ages of examples demonstrating what we coulda/shoulda/woulda done and we are still hard-of-learning and missing a beat. We didn’t glean anything from any of the “great” world conflicts, the destruction, the genocide, the waste of resources and the abandonment of empathy. We didn’t learn anything from the fallout and outcomes of our poor choices in the past. Many of our really important decisions seem to be made based on our fear and loathing of people who are not “like us” or by our desire to have all of what isn’t ours. And we truly believe we can solve all of our problems by being the loudest person in the room or the person with the most toys or by making angry posts on social platforms.Yet we are lightyears away from truly understanding or listening to or loving our neighbours. We are just the way they are and the way we’ve always been. What has happened to us as human beings? Absolutely nothing.
I know. I know. I sound out-of-sorts, worn out, weary and cranky. I am. I’m tired of hearing about rights violations. There shouldn’t be human rights violations. I’m tired of seeing racism thinly disguised as “just an observation” of the differences. I’m tired of watching the working class feather the nests of the nauseatingly wealthy. Can you even fathom what a billion dollars is? I know I can’t. The richest person in the world has close to five hundred billion dollars in personal wealth and is demanding those among us, who are living on, or below, the poverty threshold, to ante up more and do with much less. We all know the upper class should be paying a fair share, yet we vote for people who beg to differ on this point. We all know mega-corporations should pay their employees more, give up their fair share of taxes and take responsibility for most, if not all, of the climate changes and environmental destruction. I’m tired of ordinary people being nice and scared “sh*tless” about rocking-the-boat over the obvious inhumanities and atrocities that make the news every day. In my head, the song Eve of Destruction is duking it out with What the World Needs Now is Love. It’s uncomfortable and I know I’m responsible for what goes on in my head and am responsible for not being more vocal about the politicians who allow the destruction to continue.
While it seems like a very, very small gesture, I will vote on Thursday. I will vote with my heart for the person/the party who will make a demonstrable difference. Most likely, my choice will not win in this riding so it will be my responsibility to make sure the winner knows how I feel about the eve of destruction and the need for love. Get off your bottom and start to make a difference on Thursday. Peace, love and understanding.
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