People usually reflect on the past  with a warm nostalgia. They think back and decide that things were better “back then.”  But for most of us, “back then” indicates childhood, a time when we were sheltered from the harshness of reality. People usually reflect on the past  with a warm nostalgia. They think back and decide that things were better “back then.”  But for most of us, “back then” indicates childhood, a time when we were sheltered from the harshness of reality.

Today I look around and observe just how insane the world has grown. And when I think backward to my childhood, I have to remember that when I was a little girl, the 9/11 tragedy occurred and the stock market crashed and everything seemed insane then, too. And when members of older generations look back to their childhoods, they initially say that life was better then, too. But in reality, that time might include: The Great Depression, World War II, the Red Scare, The Cold War, the Vietnam conflict, the turbulence of the 60s, the Watergate scandal,  uprisings and social injustice, etc.

So when Donald Trump says he will “make America great again,” I often wonder what time period he is harking back to. Was there a time in America when life was ever really great? Was there a time when things were calm and peaceful, or when everyone had an equal share in acquiring the American dream?  Were we ever even close?

The truth is that America – and the world – has always been on fire. But we see it all differently as our perspectives change. I’m not suggesting that life today is drastically worse than at any other time, but I’d like to offer my perspective.

In the 1950’s. American playwright Arthur Miller, said, “Common human decency was going down the drain. It’s indescribable, really, because you’d get this feeling that nothing was going to be sacred anymore.” In his play The Crucible, Miller discusses how fear can tear a society apart. And everyone knows the famous FDR quote,  “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  Right now, people are afraid. Afraid of what the future will hold. Afraid of each other. Afraid of the unknown. There is an epidemic today that finds neighbor afraid of neighbor, white people afraid of non-white people, conservatives afraid of liberals, men afraid of feminists…etc. When people are afraid, they naturally get defensive, and when they get defensive, people lose sight of the the fact that what they are afraid of is other people.

It’s easy to deport a faceless mass, but it’s not so easy to deport someone with a family or a history or a personal story.

When a group of people are labeled – are attached to a stigma – they are easily herded like a flock of sheep. They become dehumanized and others’ actions toward them become inhumane.

But what if we took fear out of the equation?

We fear others because we do not know them, but we seldom take the time to get to know them, either. We are so focused on our own lives that we sometimes forget to look up. That is the change that we need to make. We need to look up and see people, not as nameless faces roaming the halls with us, but as people, as fellow students, as members of our community and as citizens of the world.

People rush to judge one another. We need to remember that each of us has a past and a present, an ongoing epic that is often hidden from the views of the world, but it exists all the same. We might not need to learn every story, but we need to recognize that it exists. For each of us.

We need to discard the labels and look at the faces. We need to see the forests, but more importantly we need to appreciate the trees. We need to see the human beings.

Once we recognize people as people, then and only then, can we start to make America great.