Equalization

I can't believe I live in a time where we have an African American president and that gays have the right to get married (and divorced) just like everyone else.  I also can't believe how long it took us as a society to get here.  And despite these monumental strides in social equality, prejudice and hatred are far from extinct.

In fact, sometimes it seems like things have never been worse.

Because I also can't believe I live in a time where terrorism and mass shootings are part of the new normal.  It's so dire and depressing. It's worse than ever before.  Like no other time in history.  Unless this is how it's felt all throughout history.

Because, the monumental is always accompanied by the horrific.

The Plague, penicillin, the Holocaust, Civil Rights. And way too many other historical atrocities and accomplishments to list.  To the casual outside observer,  the world changes while remaining pretty much the same.  Except to those individuals directly affected by history, for which the world will never be the same again.  

Because freedom is the great equalizer.

Though it's far from free.

Same as it ever was.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)