​You can try and understand both sides of anyone's story, but until you live it, you have no clue what they are going through. We all experience things at different levels. For some, hitting your thumb with a hammer hurts, but you shake it off and keep working. For others, they can get sick, dizzy, and throw up.
   Some folks would give another there last dollar, while others would not give a dime from their fortune. Some would call the person who gives a fool, and the other a miser. Both have their own reasons created by their life experiences.
  Many people will take in strays. Animals and people alike. Others maybe just a dog or cat. Still others wouldn't ever take any in.
  Our hearts, souls, and minds, have been formed over time by the cards life has dealt us. Some of us are out going, and others tend to be introverted. I am a mix of both. Sometimes I am the life of the party, while other times I just want to hide in my room.  Each of us is different in our own way. We can assume things about others, but we cannot read their minds or know what each other has going on inside upstairs.
  I remember when I was young and we lived in an urban town just outside New York City, there was a lot of racism around. I wasn't a racist kid. In fact, my best friend Mike Ellis was black. Our parents knew each other and allowed us to be friends, but as I got older I saw the deep rooted fear in them all. That was back in the summer of the race riots in 1967. It was a hot July and racial tensions across America were running ramped.  We stayed friends until my parents decided to move us out of the city and into the country. We were young and had no way to travel for a visit. We moved an hour away by car, and there were no cell phones or computers back then, and so we lost touch.
   While living in the city though, we, meaning my five siblings and I, had many run ins with other black children in the community. We were learning hatred from our parents, friends, and in turn each other.
  As I grew older, in a country town where there was only two or three black families, that hate and fear slowly disappeared. I had such great memories of my best friend and I playing, which really helped guide my soul in the right direction of true understanding and peace with all my fellow human beings. I cannot deny, that still today, if I am in a run down community of any nationality, I do sometimes succumb to that racist fear. I think a lot of it has to do with what the media portrays. They promote a lot of racism and hatred, far more than we realise.
    So any way years later, my daughter fell in love with a wonderful young man, and got married. Yes, he is black. I love this kid like he is my own. To think there was a time in my life, that if I had run into him on the street in the ghetto, I may have been afraid of him, due to my life experience and conditioning, is incomprehensible.
    So today I watch my grandkids playing together and growing up, so far, with no racism at all in their little bones. Just like my friend and I did before the outer influence ruined our peace. They are all family, and love each other to pieces. We all do. I could not imagine life without any of them.
    I have a neighbor who is a grumpy old guy. Sometimes he is great and we get along wonderfully. We talk and share our knowledge about things while walking through the vegetable garden, or maybe trimming a tree to get more light on the greens. Other times his moods are rougher then my timid soul can handle. He is a gentle old guy, maybe ten years my senior, but my heart is really soft and any confrontation I either crumple or fight back. I guess the old fight or flight response. It depends where I am inside at the moment also. Right now we are not speaking. I feel in my heart we both want to make amends, but something, maybe pride, or maybe neither of us has the strength or desire to ride the rollercoaster of life together, I'm not sure. I do know that over the summer, I will try to make peace again. Like for the fifth time in our neighborly history. Lol.
    We all have a lot going on in our lives, in our hearts, and in our minds. And we do not know what the other is thinking. Life is like being married. Wives and husbands, from different back rounds  both searching for love and happiness, and that secure feeling of being unconditionally loved by another person. Both wanting just to be loved by another human being. Both searching for answers to the many questions we all have inside us. Looking for truth and wisdom, with someone with the same interests and goals in mind. Some one who truly cares and would lay down their life for each other.
   Today is a new day. Instead of stereo typing, or judging how other people act, no matter who they are, take time to think about what you personally are going through at the moment. They are going through their own things also, and all of our actions and reactions are based on what we want or need at the moment. Let's give each other some slack, and a little room to breathe and grow. We all need that.
    We all react differently. During this pandemic, some folks will conform to the strictest rules and laws we have ever seen in our country, and others will fight back to be free from government control. Some will want compulsory vaccinations with tracking chips, others will not. Some will care which political party destroys the country, I believe both are, and others will just not care.
   We all need to focus on ourselves. Heal the parts that need healing, and feed and nurture our own hearts and souls. We will gradually become the whole persons we were meant to be. If everyone is working on their own perceived faults and injustices, one day the world will be a much happier safer place.
     Judge not less ye be judged. Let him without sin, cast the first stone. And most of all, love yourself, and then love those around you.
I want to wish you a very long, happy, healthy, prosperous life. Peace! Your friend, mike