Wrong Assumptions

Black lives matter.

 As we used to say as kids:  "well, duh!"  Of course black lives matter.  

 It's NOT that black lives don't matter.  We all SHOULD know that EVERY life matters.  EVERY life matters.  It DOESN'T matter if you are black or white (which nobody really is, after all...we are ALL varying shades of pale or dark).  It DOESN'T matter if you are male or female...or if you don't identify as either.  It DOESN'T matter if you are tall or short or fat or thin or what your religion is or if you even have one.  NONE of that matters.  ALL lives matter.

 That should be the end of it.  It is, after all, a relatively simple concept.  If you are a human being (and for now that's all that I'm focusing on; this is not a post on animal rights), YOU MATTER.  EVERY SINGLE LIFE MATTERS.  Furthermore, no one single life SHOULD matter MORE than the other.  (Notice the emphasis on SHOULD.)  Why?  Because EVERY SINGLE LIFE MATTERS.

 So why all the "fuss?"  (I KNOW that it is so much more than that, but...)   Even though EVERY SINGLE LIFE MATTERS, history has shown us that we (the collective "we" that reflects all of humanity) don't necessarily act that way.  History shows that certain groups (and in this case we're talking about African Americans, although they are not the only group that has been unfairly/unjustly singled out) have NOT been treated as if their lives mattered.  It's an UGLY history.  It's a LONG history. It is a VERY LONG and VERY UGLY history. It is a stain on humanity.  It NEEDS to change.  It has needed to change for a long time and although we, have taken some strides forward, we have also taken some horrible steps back.  We NEED to move forward.  

 Here's the thing we're acting like Black lives don't matter because that's all we are seeing. We are all guilty of looking at another human being and seeing only one thing.  We see color.  Or we see gender.  We "see" only one facet of a person.  We DON'T look beyond it.  We DON'T see or think that this is PERSON.  No matter how someone looks, we are ALL made of the same building blocks of life.  When you or I look into someone's face, we need to realize that we are looking into our own humanity.

 Black lives matter.  Because if we don't make them matter then our own lives don't matter; no matter what "color" we are.

 It's time to stop saying black lives matter.  We KNOW that black lives matter.  We KNOW that ALL lives matter.  We need to REINFORCE that all lives matter.  We need to ACT.  Every single life matters; and that's how we, as we are ALL members of the human race, need to act.  While we cannot stop seeing color (although I wish we could) we CAN see through it and to the more basic and important fact:  this face that you see before you is not a color but a human being.  That face that seems so different from your own IS your own reflection.

 Humanity matters.  It's time to start acting that way.  If we don't, then NONE of us matter.

Make your life matter.  Make every life of every race and creed and gender and...MAKE it MATTER!