The False Negative

Many people continue to argue (with venom and with more venom) about race, Wright, and wrong. The entire argument is like a "Hidden Object" puzzle: how many common objects can you find placed amongst the background of a generic setting, such as a backyard. (America's backyard still remains divisive and diverse all at once.) The one argument -- discussion? -- which still lends itself to ostrich like behavior is this: Why don't you leave the country you live in which you despise? Or, to reveal the innate failure of the question, why do you stay?

Miring ourselves and our country in this false negative perpetuates the notion that the absolute wrongness of America defines all achievements past and present and future. And simply to acknowledge our failures and wrongs, dichotomizes every discussion; Look at what we done good, and, oh yeah, we're not that great either.

The truth is that no one really takes the energy to reveal the truth. Our perceptions flail in the winds of cultural influences; media, religion, family. Which again is not a matter of wrong and right.

We grind our mindsets with the worst of who we are and are not. Yesterday, a father in Maryland drowns his three children. Two weeks ago a governor is accused of prostitution. Another mass murder occurs at a college campus.

The Pollyanish perspective is to only allow "good" news to filter through our newspapers and televisions and computers. The cynical perspective states that we need to know all that goes on -- as long as people buy or watch someone will give it to us. Yet, the repercussions of knowing that people (and therefore our country) positively impact each other every day fail to scratch the consciousness of how we define our lives.

If you raise a child for 10 years and every day of that decade you tell her how stupid she is, the results are obvious. What if you tell her nothing -- neither good nor bad -- about her abilities, her physical self, or any other part that affects who she will become? What if you only provide a skewed version of greatness and wonderfulness? None of these tactics reveal what is necessary to develop a healthy child. A child strong and ready.

This is what happens to our country and countrymen on a daily basis. Without knowing the positive, the value of goodness, the rewards of competence, the culture of success, we set ourselves up for failure. The failure that only recognizes how America cannot rise to the integrity of what makes us admirable.

Each time you hear or read of a person acting "heroic" it is as if only an anomaly such as kindness surprises and shocks us. But that does not catch our attention. We cannot (or refuse to?) recognize the possibility that what we are doing and have done to make life better is worth promotion. Why can't the single parent who graduates college be worthy of our praise and recognition? Why can't we affirm a company that allows employee volunteering as part of its job assessment? Can't we attend to and focus our national energies on those behaviors?

We must inundate our national consciousness with a daily dose of positive reinforcement without neglecting areas of weakness. We must celebrate individuals who do nothing else but work diligently with grace each day without losing sight of those who cannot work because of financial or physical pain. We must develop and maintain a balance between our strengths and our shortcomings.