I'd like to tell you all this started this morning on the show.
I'd like to tell you that a random soundbite led me to having this epiphany, this sudden realization that "we" needed some fixing.
But it wasn't just this morning's show.
It wasn't the soundbite.
To be fair, this has been brewing for some time.
The basics
Let me start with the soundbite and the show in question.
Joe Thomas is an offensive lineman for the Cleveland Browns. He's 32 years old and considered to be one of the best at his position in the National Football League.
He recently appeared on a television show and was asked a number of questions about his time in the league.
At one point in the conversation, he talked about his health and that sometimes he deals with some form of memory loss, likely attributable to a number of factors (concussions and age). At no point in time did Thomas express these thoughts as a cautionary tale, nor did he say these things as a means of seeking sympathy or expressions of sorrow for his plight.
By his own admission, he knows full well this was the career he chose for himself. These effects to his health are part of his own doing, and part because of the brutal nature of his chosen profession.
So I played the soundbite, not to show Thomas in a sympathetic light. In fact, I'd suggested he put his career and anyone else considering the NFL as a career choice on notice that there are genuine, very real risks.
I wasn't expecting the response.
"He's a bitch," one person chimed in via a text message. "He should have thought about this before he chose this career. There are plenty of others who don't cry like this because they get hurt."
Again, I played the soundbite.
Again, more of the same anonymous responses.
"There are plenty of people who have real jobs who don't complain when they have serious injuries. Who gives a sh*t about this guy?"
This is what I do
I understand the nature of my job is, from time to time, to rationally bring different sides of a debate together.
This wasn't a debate though. This wasn't a divisive issue.
This is one man relating a story about what he has gone through in order to achieve success in his -- again -- chosen profession.
Thomas made it clear in his interview that his health issues were no different than those which would be found in any other occupation or chosen field of employment.
So I began to wonder, quite loudly, what the actual issue was with listeners who felt this compulsive need to berate this professional athlete.
And therein lies one of the flaws. Apparently, because he receives a substantial amount of money doing his job, he should somehow disavow himself of expressing concern about his health or well-being. He doesn't have a right to be concerned about these things because he's a millionaire.
So I asked the question, realizing this wasn't about professional athletes anymore, this was something else.... what's the line of demarcation between feeling sympathy for another human being and essentially ignoring them at the drop of a hat? Shockingly, there was an answer to this question.
One million dollars.
Apparently that's the dividing line between caring for someone or allowing that person to rot.
I have recently begun to ponder the even more frightening concept of.... if there's a line of demarcation at which we "stop caring", then it stands to reason there's also a line at which we start caring.
So, does a homeless person merit sympathy or is it based solely on how they got there?
Does the hooker who sells meth on the side so she can eat a meal from time to time.... does she merit sympathy, or is it based on the quality of the drugs she's peddling??
This led me to another conversation, one with a far greater purpose.
The cheap seats
If we have a line -- or a multitude of lines -- in the proverbial sand as to who we care about, what is the proper way by which we express this division?
Chances are you've heard (or in this case, read) me before rambling on about our inherent need for actual conversation. A need to look another person in the eye and express to them how one genuinely feels and what those emotions entail.
Sadly, we’ve begun to lose that ability.
Apparently, it’s far easier to express ourselves in anonymous text messages and 140-character online diatribes than it would be to ask another person a question, to inquire with some level of dignity and purpose why and how we got to a certain point in our lives.
This is what I refer to as “being out of range”, the innate and all too simple ability to lob grenades at people without fear of retribution, or even simple exchanges of dialogue.
If we’re not even willing to exchange the most simple of ideas with another person by looking them in the eye, and if we have stuck to our proverbial guns that there is an actual monetary value to who may or may not be worthy of basic human decency, then this road we’re traveling down has spiraled completely out of control.
This is not about politics, because this started long before insanely radical election campaigns, before we started dividing our country and its citizens between blue and red states, before we elected a man so totally unqualified for the position of President that even his most staunch supporters are wringing their hands finding creative ways to embrace this lunacy.
This has been here for years. The need to divide us into categories. The need to put a wedge between all of us and then not be accountable to explain to us how those divisions came to pass.
The need to isolate ourselves... from ourselves.
In summation
We’ve become too emboldened by our own reckless sense of entitlement and our need for anonymity.
We’ve become desensitized to any form of human emotion.
We’re becoming increasingly more intolerant and disrespectful towards the very things which used to bring out the best in the human condition.
And we’ve managed to do all of this -- 140 characters at a time -- while also managing to create invisible lines and impossibly deep chasms between those who “deserve” our attention and those who apparently are just crying for it.
I wish I had a solution for this that made sense.
I wish there was a way to magically bring back some sense of worth and some ideology of working together.
I wish we’d find a way to speak to one another, even if that means we have to start off shouting before we learn to sit down, calmly deal with reason, with fact, with passion and genuine discord.
But we’re steering ourselves further away from that type of behavior.
And we did so -- by drawing lines in the sand, by distancing ourselves from our neighbors, our friends, our loved ones and even those with who we disagree -- without uttering a word.
That’s all.