My Christmas message: We can do better!

I enjoy writing a column, almost published weekly, for The Community News in Aledo, Texas, west of Fort Worth. This week that publication is becoming The Community (Good) News because there’s not enough of it to be read, seen or heard in the media these days. It’s not really the fault of the news-deliverers; it is more of a function of the society that still ogles at car wrecks on the side of the road and want to hear every juicy details of any Hollywood star’s personal problems.
If the public would insist, through its choices of music, books, films and publications, to accentuate the positive instead of morbidly dwelling on people’s shortcomings and tragedies, there WOULD be more good news to be read, seen and heard.
Parker County has its shares of good news to spread among the masses. And I would like to add a couple of words for the future: We can do better! As a collective known as the human race, we can do better! Much, much better, in fact!
People in east Parker County read too many stories of tragedy over the last 12 months – children dying too young for going too fast on roadways or being innocent victims when adults could no longer cope with everyday lives. The most graphic involved a woman, with a low-paying, mind-numbing job, stuck in poverty, living in near-squalid conditions, unable to escape an abusive relationship, who took the lives of her adolescent children before committing suicide – all out of complete desperation without anyone to help her.
In almost every case, including this one, it was probably preventable if someone had decided to help – to prevent – to avoid. Had someone come forward to help, to have pointed that person in the proper direction, taken a hand and led them to the proper agency, those would have been stories never told because that misery would not have occurred.
I was reading last Sunday’s Points section in the Dallas Morning News, and some of the facts published struck like a Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (bang! bang! on my head!). Each page made me realize how much people can treat other people much better in order to product a more peaceful co-existence within mankind.
I was stunned to learn that Texas ranked first among all states in the number of teenage pregnancies and next-to-last in the number of working poor families (emphasis on the word “working”). Texas is also third lowest in the county for its expenditures on public welfare programs per capita ($808). A full 40 percent of those in poverty are under the age of 18 – meaning children who have NO control over their environment.
One out of every four children in Texas are born into poverty and, as a state, we are third-highest in the country (behind Mississippi and New Mexico) for the number of people who go hungry, or live in fear of starvation, every single day!
If education is the answer, why is the Texas high school drop out rate at 34 percent? Why does it ranked second to last for its verbal SAT scores and only 46th for math scores? Why has the average spending per public school student slid from 25th in the nation in 1999 to 41st?
Why does Texas rank first among all states in terms of uninsured population at 24.6 percent? Why do we allow this? Surely, we can do better!
The section continues about the state’s prison population, the makeup of the youth sent to the wasteland known as the Texas Youth Commission and which county is considered totally toxic to be am American resident (answer: Jefferson). Each cold, hard fact just screams at you to begin to fulfill my four word statement: We can do better!
How? That’s a more complicated question. It is going to require more compassion and initiative from a cross-section of society. It will mean more interaction from service organizations, churches, social outreach agencies, civic groups, school classrooms and, more importantly, normal day-to-day living human beings. It will mean people of means might have to share a little wealth with those not as fortunate, or gifted, or blessed with such worldly possessions – and do so without denigrating those being assisted.
It means if you see someone in obvious need, in obvious inner pain (that a pill or a shot of penicillin cannot cure), you must try to do something to help them. Show them where to go to ask for help. Show them HOW to ask for help. Tell them if it perfectly acceptable to seek help in order not to do harm to others. Oh yes, it means that help has to be available, through consistent charitable efforts or governmental support. After all, isn’t the job of government to “protect” all the people – not just the richer ones?
Tell someone close to you that he or she can do better for their children or for their relatives. If it is a co-worker, tell them they can, and should, ask for help to kick addictions, to face personal challenges, to avoid splintering their lives into the kind of Humpty-Dumpty pieces that cannot be put back together again.
Motivate yourself in whatever manner you find acceptable – from “What Would Jesus Do?” to “If for the grace of God, go I” to “Do onto others as you have them do onto you.” Or you can simply tell yourself, “It just the right damn thing to do.” That YOU can do better in order for others to do better.
Yes, we can do better and that IS the good news I share today. We should do better; we can do better; we must do better.
For their sake … and ours.