In The Face Of…

*This post and its accompanying graphic are not at all intended to be political.

Please note, I love Kool-Aid. I drink it very rarely, but when I do, it takes me right back to the best times of my childhood. I use Kool-Aid because it is such a universally recognized product.

I recently started rewatching Ted Lasso again. I love Ted Lasso because it teaches moral lessons while entertaining. After reflecting on the show and the current state of things, I was inspired to write this post.

For the past decade, I have been feeling like the world we are living in is sick. I know many others that feel the same way. Many blame politics, religion, or nationalism but I’m not here to place blame, because it doesn’t matter. Pointing fingers is just creating more angst, more divide.

Across the United States and across the globe, we are being pitted against each other. Various sources including the media, politicians, religious leaders, corporations, and many others have done nothing but point fingers and lead us to believe that some specific segment of society is to blame for the problems we are facing. Divisiveness is a manipulation tactic. It is a form of control and truly a form of mental abuse that is being carried out on a societal scale. There is a lot of money to be made from this manipulation.

Billions of advertising dollars are made as we are glued to the news outlets. To be clear, political affiliation doesn’t matter. In America, whether you are watching a far left or far right news station, you are both drinking the Kool-Aid, be it red or blue. Then there are those that mix the two thinking they are better off. Purple Kool-Aid is still Kool-Aid. Who didn’t mix flavors of Kool-Aid when they were kids? It is the sugar that they are selling. It is the sugar we are addicted to.

What happens when people have too much sugar? Generally speaking it ramps us up, and if not controlled, leads us to a manic state. I’m not singling out the media. Donations to religious institutions and politicians, sales of products or subscription services, etc.. Billions and billions of dollars of money be exchanged because we are so scared of each other that we will spend everything to protect ourselves at any cost. That cost is not just monetary. It is costing us our family, our friends, our mental health, and most tragically it is costing lives.

So how do we fix it? We drink water to flush the sugar out of our system. Not flavored water, not sparkling water, but pure, clear, flat water. No one has ever been to a hospital and given sparkling water by default. It isn’t a quick process, but it is a necessary one. Slowly we can filter it out. That’s not to say it has to be eliminated completely, but it needs to be kept in check.

We filter out the divisiveness by focusing on our commonalities. What unites us, far exceeds what divides us. The next time you are in a busy place, stop for a moment and look around. Each person you see is living in their own reality of the world. Each person has known heartache and joy, love and loss, and has faced challenges that only they could understand. Just as no one could possibly ever completely understand what you have been through, we cannot understand what they have been through. To apply any blanket of thought or judgement on someone else is absolutely absurd, let alone a whole segment of the population.

For an example from my own life, I recently encountered a threat to my life, and some say I should have dismissed it, that I was making too big of a deal of it. They didn’t mean it, they were just having a mental health crisis. But what they didn’t see, that I did, was the murder of a 24 year old girl and her coworker right outside my apartment two years prior. The shooter was her jealous ex-boyfriend. What they didn’t know, that I did was that a local business man was murdered by his wife who was having a mental health crisis. For someone else to invalidate my thoughts and feelings based on their experiences is horribly wrong; but that is what drinking the Kool-Aid is all about.

The core of the problem is that different does not equal wrong. Different does not equal bad. We should celebrate our differences. That doesn’t mean that you believe the same thing, or even that you agree with them. It just means you understand that they have lived a completely different life than you. Even a child lives a completely different life than its parents.

I am a film producer by trade. I handle logistics, contracts, money, communications, etc. and I am great with technology. My coworker was a legendary Key Grip in the film industry for 40 years. Technology is not his strong point, but rigging is not mine. I don’t know the first thing about what he does, except that he does it incredibly well and very efficiently. I tell him what the overarching issue is, if he hasn’t already noticed it, and he works his magic. One of my best friends is a seamstress in the film industry, again, not a huge technology fan. I couldn’t sow a button on a garment to save my life. We all have our strong points and that’s beautiful. If I conformed to them, we would lose my skillset, if they conform to me, they those theirs.

We all have our weaknesses. Instead of judging on others weaknesses, we need to accept them, and dare I say it, help them. Every day we are judged by countless people and we judge countless people. I am just as guilty as anyone else on this, I wear no halo. Though imagine if those countless people helped us overcome our weaknesses and we helped them overcome theirs. Now we have a whole community (potentially world) helping each other to become the best version of themselves. They say it takes a village, be the village.

We all need to do better. That is what we are all yearning for. Group A has to accept Group B and Group B has to accept Group A. All of those entities forcing the Kool-Aid on us, can and will still flourish, but we can learn to put the human back in humanity.

We can do this. We just have to start. Will it ever be perfect? No, but what is? It will however, be a vast improvement over the state of society. “Gradarius Firmus Victoria,” the motto from Ted Lasso’s AFC Richmond Team, translates from Latin to “taking little steps towards victory”. That is precisely what we need to do.

Ted Lasso was released in 2020 amid the Covid Pandemic. In many ways, it was how I survived the pandemic. The isolation, fear, and the uncertainty. It can help us survive this too.

The world will always have Rupert charachters, but if we lead our lives with hope, with positivity, with peace, with love, as long as we believe, we can globally become the greatest civilization, the best version of ourselves. That is how we ALL truly become great again.

Thank you Jason Sudeikis, Thank you Apple TV+, Thank you Ted Lasso. Thank you for giving us something to believe in…

Ourselves.

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