One day of the week isn’t enough. A month isn’t enough. A year isn’t enough. Changing perceptions, deeply rooted prejudices, cultural stereotypes is not the work of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or even years.
It takes lifetimes. Yes, lifetimes. Plural.
You think this is happening now? It has been happening since time immemorial.
Change is in you. Within you. Read. Feel what you read. Dwell on it.
Talk to people who you think have gone through it or something similar. Cast aside preconceived notions.
Listen with an open mind and heart. Be prepared to get hurt. For you will. You think you know it all. Till we reach out, grasp others hands in empathy, silence and togetherness, we can’t know what they’ve been through.
Be humble. Humble to listen. Humble to respect the other. Humble to learn.
The Prophet teaches: “Whoever has arrogance in his heart equal to an atom’s weight shall not enter Paradise. A man inquired about a person who likes to wear beautiful clothes and fine shoes, he answered: ‘God is beautiful and likes beauty’ and explained pride as rejecting truth because of self-esteem and looking down on other people.” (Muslim, 65)
You think you can judge. Yes you do. I do. We can’t. No one can. We all are alike. Started out the same way, as a clot in our mother’s wombs.
You think you are different. Why? If you were born and are destined to die, you are the same. ALL THE SAME.
Who are you to look at color? If you were blind, would you see the same way?
You judge. I judge. He judges. She judges. They judge.
Why judge?
Are you any different from them?