Every day in the news, online, on the radio and every reference point that you can think of has a ready discussion and breaking story of tolerance being ‘amplified’ to the deaf ears of a truly intolerant modern day society. There we have it, families, individuals, marriages and businesses are faced with this ultimate dilemma in their spheres and how to delicately solve internal problems. Race, language, , sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity has reared its ugly head back into our lives leading to such unfortunate scenes of gun violence in the states of Louisiana and Minnesota.
It’s high time for parents, teachers and political and religious leaders to take it upon themselves to instill the culture of ‘tolerance’ with those whom they lead and influence. We are all human beings, created equally in the eyes of a living God and yet we have devised so many ways to divide and retaliate against each other by creating divisions on a map through boundaries and countries, cities, counties, states and even nations. In our desire to have supreme independence from colonial powers that were- we have failed in our biggest responsibility to protect those in the confines of our own walls and borders!
An example in point are two strong nations whose names signify something out of this world namely; The United States of America and Great Britain. The former uses the derivative of ‘united’ while the latter uses ‘Great’ but if we are to analyze these two nations and hold them to account based on what they represent then they have painstakingly failed to live up to what they portend. The world and the society in which we contribute to can; only have a great and united world, only when tolerance in the meaning of the very world has taken application in the inner person. You cannot learn tolerance by merely singing, acting, teaching, preaching, dating, tweeting, posting or marrying into it but only when you change your frame of reference and remove any unnecessary roadblocks towards cultivating this virtue!
Tolerance cannot be achieved in a day, week, month or even year but it is a lifetime cause and pursuit. This is a critical challenge for every human being to understand and to apply like the great litmus tests undertaken in our high school chemistry classes! The next time you choose to speak please ask yourself whether you are demonstrating tolerance for others?
