Published: September 25, 2009 11:44 am      

Things will stay the way they are until we change them

I think one of the all-too-common phrases that I despise hearing most in this world is the one that says “that's just the way it is.”

Could a statement possibly be more dispiriting or hopeless? Even in this nation that so fervently promotes the American Dream and the belief that anyone can do anything they set their mind to do, those six little words, no matter what circumstance they describe, hold the power to suck the life out of our most vibrant aspirations and steal the heart from our most passionate dreams.

As a child, and even up to today, I suppose, I have always tried hard to ignore and wholeheartedly deny that phrase of despair whenever I have heard it spoken. That in itself, though, has proven to be a difficult task, as a sad sense of powerless acceptance of the status quo seems to be commonplace in this world in which we live.

When I was in elementary school, we were assigned to draw a picture of ourselves in the career position we hoped to obtain when we grew up. My friends drew lawyers and veterinarians and all sorts of other things, but I was the only first grader who drew myself as a country music entertainer. “That's cute, CharLy,” my teacher told me when I proudly held up my drawing for all to see. “But little girls grow up to be more practical things like doctors and nurses and teachers. That's just the way it is.”

And later, when that innocent little girl began to see from afar such harsh life realities as discrimination, poverty and abuse, she quietly asked why something couldn't be done to make things better, and she got that same pitiful answer. “That's just the way it is,” they told me. “It's always been that way, and you can't do anything to change it.”

How discouraging it was to discover that I was living in a world in which the common practice was to sit back and let life, with all of its injustices and inequities, just happen, without even putting up a fight. Complainers and criticizers, of course, were easy to find, but the people who would stand up and do something about it, they were much fewer and farther between.

And that's why, when this national health care debate that we find ourselves in the midst of now began to boil this summer, I found myself taking pride in the bitter disputes that broke out in so called “town hall meetings” all across the country. It's not a matter of which side I'm on or what I hope the result will be in the end; it is much more about the occurrence of the passionate debates themselves, and the fact that Americans are standing up and fighting for and against something once again. Rather than simply letting it be and meekly accepting the decisions of those in power, thousands of everyday people throughout the nation are taking a stance and making their voices heard. Finally, we aren't giving in to the false adage that tells us to tolerate and be quiet because 'that's just the way it is.'

And you know, I believe we could do so much more if we would only take the peaceful model of healthy protest and debate set forth in those town hall meetings and apply it to the other important issues of our society. If we would stand up and fight just as fiercely for the rapidly decaying morals and principles that our ancestors once founded this nation upon, or for our children's right to have a safe place to play at night, or for our own right to live in a world that is not flooded with the evils of hatred, greed and envy, just think of the difference that we would make.

They say “that's just the way it is,” but if a woman named Rosa Parks would have listened to all those who told her 'that's just the way it is' back in 1955, people of minority descent might still be sitting in the back of busses today.

Years earlier, if a man named Mahatma Gandhi had believed 'that's just the way it was' in India, the country may never have gained its independence from British rule, and thousands of Indians living in South Africa might have continued to live as a suppressed and immensely mistreated people.

If a tiny Calcutta woman known around the world as Mother Teresa had given in to the notion that 'that's just the way it is', millions of impoverished people, orphan children, and victims of such devastating diseases as leprosy and tuberculosis would never have received the treatment and care that every suffering human deserves.

And, if a 33-year-old man named Jesus Christ had said “that's just the way it is”2,000 years ago, we would all forever be lost.

Things are only the way they are because nobody has had the courage to step up and change them. Together, let's take that step today.