A young friend of mine shared her article with me and I thought I would share it with you.
Jamisyn Smith was born in 2000. She has been home-educated her entire life and takes a few classes at the high school. She has four siblings and lives with her parents in Summit County Utah.
Jamisyn has won awards in photography, and writing at the county level. She has participated in 4-H since 2010. She loves architecture, fashion design, and philosophy.
Imagine an 800-pound gorilla walks into to the room. Everyone would notice, at first. But after a while the gorilla could start moving across the room and no one would even notice. It moves slowly. Distractions keep us from seeing it move. And the people that do notice the movement, their called “crazy.” It doesn’t move all at once.
The gorilla moves an inch at a time, so slow that other things distract us from noticing. We‘re told that there is some crazy disease, or there was a shooting, and then the gorilla moves while we are caught up in all the media around the distractions. We get distracted by the news that Donald Trump is winning the presidential race, or we get distracted with Caitlyn Jenner’s plastic surgery.
Nobody cares about the gorilla as long as no one sees it move. We are too focused on the flashy movements of the distractions, the things that they let us see. And the people who do see the gorilla move; just call them old fashioned or fanatic, because then people can sit and make fun of them while the gorilla moves on, ever so slightly.
How do we stop the gorilla from moving all together? We don’t. There will always be someone who is going to try to move this gorilla, but if we want to notice it and try to keep it from moving, we have to keep our eyes on it.
We can either buy into the the distractions that are being offered or we can separate ourselves from the media and everyone who is caught up in those distractions.
Who cares that “Love wins,” when we are brutally murdering people in another country? Who cares that Bruce changed his name to Caitlyn? Someone is moving that gorilla while we bicker about “morals” and “equality.” Love wins, when we stop invading countries and killing people over money and greed.
That’s how the gorilla moves across the room without people noticing. If you don’t get what I am trying to say, then maybe it is time to pay less attention to Caitlyn Jenner and pay more attention to importance of the gorilla — my substitute for America. In my analogy, one side of the room is free and the other side is a confined cell that is so tight you almost can’t breathe. As the gorilla moves across the room, the room slowly gets smaller but we don’t notice until it’s too late to go back.
We need to wake up before we are confined in that small cell, and we need to stop worrying about who is winning the Oscars and worry more about who is winning the war on freedom.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams