My cousin Todd has always been an old soul and one of the
kindest souls and people you will meet. He was my favorite person in the world
when I was little and he remains such and I loved hanging out with him and learning
so much from him. I learned all about the Halloween movies (1 through 5), I
learned about Freddy Kruger, I learned about The Beatles, The Doors, Janis
Joplin, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, and all things related to art. His
respect for all living things, human and animal, was noticed by my small
impressive mind.
I’ll never forget thinking how amazingly grown up he was
when I saw him reading The Diary of Anne
Frank and I remember him telling me about the book. Walking me through her
families ordeal and persecution. I remember not understanding the gravity of
that era at the time, but I remember the way her diary ended and I’ve always
held on to those words.
If you’re not familiar with Anne Frank, please take time to
research who she was (beyond the lovely Justin Bieber visit to her house years
ago). In a nutshell, this was a young Jewish girl who was forced to hide, with
her family, in Amsterdam after escaping Nazi-controlled Germany. Anne and her
family hunkered down in rooms that were hidden behind bookshelves in the building
where her father worked. The family was eventually betrayed and split up and
taken to concentration camps after the Nazis had taken control of the Netherlands. Anne died in a concentration camp in 1945. Her
diary was found back in Amsterdam and documents her life between 1942 and
August of 1944—when she was taken to her eventual death.
In her diary, she said “there is an urge and rage in people
to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception,
undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built
up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind
will have to begin all over again.”
I, like millions of other people, have spent the last few
days watching the incredibly disturbing videos from Baton Rouge and
Minneapolis. I don’t understand the incidents. I don’t understand these deaths.
I’m sickened by these videos and these situations. I feel for the families who
lost two fathers, friends, brothers, uncles, husbands, boyfriends, sons.
Would these incidents have happened with white passengers or
suspects involved? I have no idea. Sadly, probably not. I am not blind enough
to not recognize a problem with law enforcement on some level. I am not
ignorant enough to watch these two videos and some of the videos from the last
year and not feel that something is incredibly off with the way these
situations are handled.
I, like millions of other people, have spent tonight reading
and watching videos from the sniper-style assassination deaths of four police
officers and the injuries of 7 other police officers in Dallas. I don’t
understand how a peaceful protest turns into a war zone. I don’t understand the
incidents. I’m sickened by the videos. I feel for the families who lost
fathers, friends, brothers, uncles, husbands, boyfriends, sons.
And I find myself reverting back to Todd’s room in Northern
California. Listening to him talk about peace. Wanting to understand what a
hippie really was, but loving that he seemed to fit the mold. And I wonder, did
Anne Frank see our time?
Have we undergone a great change? Has everything that has
been built, cultivated, and grown been disfigured and destroyed now? Will we,
as mankind, have to begin all over again? Are we at that point? Are we so
broken that the only fix is to start over?
Generalizations will always drive me up a wall. Not all
black people are suspects and, obviously, shouldn’t be treated as such right
off the bat. Not all police officers are murderous, power hungry racists and
shouldn’t be treated as such right from the start. Even more dangerous than any
gun, knife, punch, kick, or bomb are the generalizations that we as humans
throw on other brothers and sisters in our mankind family. Anne was right. There
is an urge to kill. To destroy. And to murder. And I would add that as a
response to these frightening and life-altering events, there is an urge to
generalize. And that scares me more than any physical threat that exists.
I wish I was as strong as Anne Frank. I wish I had half as
much courage and hope that she had to her last day on this earth in one of the
most heinous and awful times in history. To think that Anne Frank, through all
that she experienced in her short life, uttered these profound words:
“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals,
because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them,
because in spite of everything I still
believe that people are really good at heart.”
A 16-year-old girl wrote those profound words at a time when
her family was suffering some of the worst persecution a group of people have
had to endure. A 16-year-old girl who should have been enjoying whatever kids
were doing in the 1940s, who had to be scared, who had to be distraught, chose
to keep her ideals because she still believed in mankind. She still believed
that people are good at heart.
I want to believe that. I want to feel that way. And our
world makes it so incredibly difficult to. I believe Todd feels that. I believe
Anne feels that still and would stand by her words.
Tonight, our country feels so divided. Which, sadly, doesn’t
feel much different than the last little while. And maybe before we talk about
this race killed that race or this race pulled a gun on that race. We talk
about all the races involved experiencing the exact same thing tonight as each
other—an empty side of the bed, an empty bedroom, a void in their hearts, and a
family member to say goodbye to. And that hurts. And maybe our country can take
that hurt that we all feel and use it to unify because people are really good
at heart. Maybe we can take that hurt and avoid completely having to start over
as mankind.
Like any dad, I want to be the hero to my daughters. Of
course! But tonight, I’m committed to helping my daughters discover admiration
for real heroes like Anne Frank. I want my daughters to have the Anne Frank
approach to humanity. And the Todd approach to life. They’re going to grow up in a world that has terrible
things happening far too often by people. And I want them to believe, deep in
their hearts and souls, that in spite of everything they see and hear and
experience, people are really good at heart.
Now. Don’t let me down, people.
