Motivational Monday

Motivational Monday

"The test of courage comes when we're the minority.  The test of tolerance comes when we're the majority."

~ Ralph Stockman


Over the course of my lifetime, I've been deemed an "opinionated person"... There's few topics of conversation I don't have an opinion on, and when asked I've never been shy about sharing my opinion of something.  HOWEVER... I am not sure if it's my age, my point in life, or what, but over the past few months I've found myself getting frustrated with people that are intolerant of others.  Don't get me wrong there are certain things that I don't tolerate well, but I have noticed more and more people that when someones opinions don't match up exactly with theirs it's like it's the end of the world. 

I've noticed it on a national level: The Brown family from the TLC show Sister Wives... They're a polygamist family:  SO WHAT!?  It's the lifestyle they chose to live.  Would I want to share my husband with 3 other woman and have my children have 18 siblings, no, but that's the religion they were raised in.  And on 19 Kids and Counting... The Duggar Family chose to have as many children as God would allow them to have.  Would I want 19 children??  You must be out of your damn mind, but it works for them.  Her uterous has got to be about to fall out of her by now, but she loves her children, they're well fed, clean, and always have a friend around.  Who are we to judge what they do?  There's some people in the world that should have NEVER been allowed to have one child, but again, that's not our call.

I've also noticed it when tragedy strikes:  In the aftermath of Joplin tornados, I was reading an article about the devistation and I was shocked and saddened by some of the comments about how "if those hilbilly people knew how to make it to the basement they'd still be alive" or "It's like the tornados knew what they were doing because they only ruined the poor people's houses"  HONESTLY?!  How indecent can you be?  Whether those people had a million dollar home or were renting a home off of a fixed income, it was their HOME.  It was torn from them with not enough warning and how dare people blame any of what mother nature created on the poor people that suffered her rampage.

I think the thing that is the worst is that we all do it.  We naturally judge everything around us... it's human nature.  All that I'm saying is although I think it's imparative that everyone has their own voice and their own opinion, we need to really watch how and when we speak it.  Tolerance is an artform.  One that unfortunitely is not being practiced too often anymore...

Happy Monday :)