Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
~Franz Kafka
A child has the magical ability to see a person, not their color, not their shape, not their deeds nor their misdeeds. They see through to the purity of the soul. As we age, we tend to lose the ability to see the beauty inherent in all peoples. Our vision becomes clouded by distrust, hate, prejudice, envy, fear of the unknown rendering us beauty-blind, unable to accept the beauty of diversity. We exist beauty-blind.
Unable to see the beauty in diversity, we end up judging others. Judging soon devolves into hating. We define people by their religion. The color of their skin. The orientation of their sexuality. We can’t see the beauty behind the sari, the niqab, the low-slung jeans. We see in black and white without space in the spectrum to feel the grays let alone the vast array of resplendent colors.
The tRump bigotry did not cause us to become beauty-blind. The American people were already beauty-blind and naturally elected the president mirroring their own wretched souls. They voted in the person they deserve. They voted in a bigot because they allow themselves to live fearfully, choose not to cross arbitrary boundaries and embrace the infinite color combinations making our world so special. During WWII it was the Japanese. Today it is Muslims. Tomorrow it will be some other group, maybe yours, we refuse to take the time to understand. Seeing in monochrome takes no effort.
Until we, as a people, make the conscious choice to embrace diversity we will be stuck in a monochrome world which is sad because there is so much color to experience.
Musings of a Middle Aged Man 