Thought Picnic: Free Your Mind

Opening the mind

It goes without saying with each interaction and posting I see on Social Media it is interesting to read views, opinions, entrenchments and prejudices along with the less bigoted, tolerant, open-minded and pragmatic accommodating stances of others.

I am more attracted to the accommodating types, people who despite who they are, are willing to understand and appreciate that there are others very different, very diverse, very separate, very distant from themselves, but still have a right to not only exist, but should be allowed the pursuit of happiness like any other.

Feeding our ability to sympathise

Our shared humanity when allowed to walk free beyond the little confines of our own experiences opens us up to realities we may never fully understand but still can embrace.

This is what feeds our ability to sympathise, probably empathise or even dare to be compassionate, when we extricate ourselves from the moralistic impositions that give us the licence for unfeeling indifference, judgemental apathy, disinterest, and incitement to hate.

We all are guilty of it one way or the other when we think little of others in comparison to ourselves or the people we hold in high esteem that we are ready to sacrifice them on any altar be it of religion, of belief, of creed, of custom, of tradition, of principle or of the law without any inkling or sense of tender-heartedness or mercy - we find basis and justification for where we stand and with that feel comfortable.

Free your mind

We have the capacity for more if we allow ourselves the frequent opportunities to extend ourselves.

It brings to mind the lines in the lyrics of Free Your Mind by En Vogue which go thus:

Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow.

Freeing one’s mind is a journey in our recognition of the global village of great diversity we reside in, a world of over 7 billion people of whom we would find relationships of love and hate, friendship and enmity, fun and boredom, joy and sadness, acceptance and rejection with the challenge to treat others as we would love to be treated.

If we were to walk a mile in another man’s shoes, would we think differently about them and accept them in the brotherhood of our existence?

The beauty of blindness

Be colour blind, be gender blind, be sexuality blind, be religiously blind, be personality blind, be status blind, be blind to every difference that you don’t yet fully understand but exists around you by situation and by circumstance but still harbour a searching, curious, yearning spirit to find unity, affinity, amity and the best of the next and the next and the next until a bridge of humanity is built towards our togetherness and harmony. Free your mind.

"Free Your Mind"

Prejudice, wrote a song about it.
Like to hear it? Here it go.

I wear tight clothing, high heeled shoes
It doesn't mean that I'm a prostitute, no no
I like rap music, wear hip hop clothes
That doesn't mean that I'm out sellin' dope no no
Oh my forgive me for having straight hair, no
It doesn't mean there's another blood in my heir yeah yeah
I might date another race or color
It doesn't mean I don't like my strong black brothers.

Why oh why must it be this way
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow.
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow

So I'm a sistah
Buy things with cash
That really doesn't mean that all my credit's bad, oooh
So why dispute me and waste my time
Because you really think the price is high for me
I can't look without being watched, and oh
You rang my buy before I made up my mind, OW!
Oh now attitude, why even bother
I can't change your mind, you can't change my color

Why oh why must it be this way?
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow…

Why oh why must it be this way?
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow... FREE YOUR MIND!

Denzil Foster, Thomas McElroy