My new religion

I was taking a bath and considering the people i know and admire. I considered everybody from rap legends, country music legends, my parents, investors, to politicians and t.v hosts. I came to realize that the greatest of them have the most open minds.

It's like when you open your mind there's a whole new dimension to how you see things, how you see people and how you see yourself. People without open minds are like the blind but worse. They're worse in the sense that even some blind people with open minds out perform, out shine and out live people who can see and don't have open minds. Ray Charles comes to mind, but an even relatively unknown blind man comes to my mind.

He's name is Sunny and he was my senior by 3 years in high school. Since my high school was a boarding school, i had the opportunity to live in the same room with Sunny. We slept at adjacent corners of the room. One night i woke up in the middle of the night and the lights were off. For some reason i was wandering around the room. All of sudden i heard somebody call my name, my first thought was- there's no way anybody can see me in this dark. I then turned on the lights and saw who it was. It was Sunny, he was reading his braille. He asked me why i wasn't asleep and i asked him the same. That night i got to know that he stayed up all night almost every night reading. I also realized later that he knew everybody by either their footsteps, voices and in some cases body odors. We became relatively close and i learned he was a straight A's student. I also probably learned more from him than any other person in that school.

A mind is the part of you that learns things, that dictates the way threat others, the way you carry yourself, and the way you think. To this end i tend to support the theory of the mind being a Tabula rasa(blank slate). When we come into the world society writes on the slates of our mind, but some of us learn some things/ideas early in life and then we seal up our minds from ideas contrary to those initially learned one's. The problem is that by sealing up our mind we disallow growth. What is even worse is that we remain in that state of closed mindedness and allow those ideas in us, to ferment, if you will, then when we feel the toxicity of the fermentation process we feel like we have something to offer. Since this state of ignorance is contagious we spread it. You'll forgive me for using Jeremiah Wright as an example here.

The Reverend still lives in a time when America meant White America. In a time when a black woman didn't negotiate foreign policy, a time when there was so much conflict and animosity between the races. He has stayed with that mind set, he has allowed it ferment into his fiber and now, even though his intentions are good, his mind set is outdated, and he's causing more harm than good. He can look at a racist, homophobic, and antisemitic person like Farrakhan and let his magazine say he "epitomized greatness." Then there's Obama on the other hand who after listening to his speech today has proved that he hasn't forgotten the past, but he does understand the present, and wants to be a part of the future.

Another great advantage of opening our minds is that, it is actually the best way to teach others. One person once commented that those who are most eager to share their faith with others are the least willing to hear about the faith of others. Tell me about it, i've been a victim of this mind set, and i now would listen to any body that has anything to say about faith, yes, even atheists. Daryl Davis is a black man who was once a friend of the Grand Dragon(national head) of the KKK. He has been condemned by many for his close relationship with the klan. I attended one his lectures and one thing he said is "while actively learning about/from someone else, you are passively teaching them about yourself."

How then do we open our mind? I believe the best way to do it is to read what others have to say. I think audio books are nice, but there's a voice of your mind that actually reads when your eyes scan through paragraph's of writing. When i talk of reading i don't mean reading just reading blogs, i mean reading biographies, inspirational wittings and probably anything that comes our way. There's this rumor that the paper text would die in our generation, and even speculations that we may be reading less than any other generation that ever existed. I say let's turn the trend around, let's read both paper and screen scripts. Let's open our minds and be that great generation we have the potential to be.

If there's anything that can be considered to be my religion now. It's probably having an open mind. I refuse to take Christianity or any other religion or even lack of religion and then seal my mind from others; this doesn't mean i refuse to accept them, it means i accept that all of them should and would be well examined by me before they are either turned down or taken on. I refuse to seal my mind from your point of view or your religion, teach me i want to learn. Finally, i refuse to respect anybody that has a closed mind, be it a preacher or an atheist.

"Ignorance leads to fear, fear when not checked leads to hate, hatred when not checked leads to destruction."-Daryl Davis(Black friend of the KKK)

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