Yesterday at work one of the people I supervise was finished with her shift, and told me goodbye. I thanked her for all her hard work and said, "I always enjoy working with you. You make my job so much easier." She smiled and said, "Right back at you." It was a lovely thing for her to say, wasn't it? We depend on each other, in the workplace and in the home and in our nation and in the world. We are all interrelated. We are all interdependent.
Tomorrow in America we recognize the birthday of the great Martin Luther King, Jr. How wonderful that we are finally having some sort of meaningful dialogue on guns here in our country, as I think about this man who advocated a non-violent approach. The world suffered a great loss when he was killed.
I was a child when President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. died, so I absorbed those losses as a child. I remember thinking of how their children lost their daddies, and how terrible that would be, to have someone shoot and kill your father. Those children are all grown-ups today, just like me, people who have had to live most of their lives without a dad. These men also left wives. Brave women named Jacqueline and Ethel and Coretta, who felt the pain of losing the man they loved. I am not naive. I know that it is an acknowledged fact that all three of these very great men were unfaithful to their wives. I don't know what went on in their marriages, but I know that it would be painful to have your young husband snuffed out in the prime of his life. Your husband. Your partner. The father of your children. No matter how troubled or imperfect the marriage might be, it would be such a difficult loss.
King and his wife were introduced by a mutual friend. To start off, they spoke at length on the telephone, and before they ever even met in person, King said to Coretta Scott, "You know every Napoleon has his Waterloo. I'm like Napoleon. I'm at Waterloo. And I'm on my knees." Wowzers! I love words, and I will admit that I love men who know how to use them. It would be hard not to love a man who would tell you something like that.
Flawed and imperfect like we all are, it seems to me that King tried to make this world a better place. He is gone, but we are here. All of us, in this time and place, all of us in this together. We need each other, desperately. It makes me want to be a better person, not just for myself, but knowing that you need me, too.
"Waterloo" written by Benny Anderson, Bjorn Alvaeus and Stig Anderson
Susan
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