Unity

                A father and his daughter are spending a quiet afternoon together reading the Sunday newspaper at their living hall. The daughter reads an article of how a corrupted politician was arrested by the police and now awaits trial. Her eyebrows frown in disgust while her father slowly lowers his paper as he turns to the next page.

“I can’t believe such people. How can they be so corrupted and self-fish? They are supposed to be our leaders, our role models. They are supposed to inspire us. Are they trying to say to corruption is a good thing and that we should follow in his footsteps? To make matters worse is that we people supported him and put him in office. What is wrong with the times today?” a frustrated daughter speaks her mind as she puts down her paper.

                  Then her father puts down his paper and removes his reading glasses. “Yes it is we people that elected such a person to be in power but at the time we did not know that person had his own intentions. The person we voted for, now answering his crimes, promised us many things, many changes. However that was just an act to fool us. The times now are different from when they were many years ago but some things haven’t change. Greed, corruption and self-fish intentions run rampant in our civilized society but even during my time there were corrupted people. However our desire as countrymen has not changed since then – our desire to make our country a better one.

                  You see in the past we were divided, not by race or religion, but by our minds. We restricted ourselves from conversing with the other party because we were biased. Yes even at that time we were ignorant because we thought only our ideals were the best and the rest were wrong. We were young and so foolish.” The father laughs a little as he spoke and continued on.

              “Despite being biased and self-centered, we all wanted one thing. Deep down, we were all fighting for the same reason though we may not say it or show it. We were striving for unity in our country. Of course no real result could be seen since we were all acting independently so how was that working towards unity? Yes there were roadblocks along the way like racial issues and propaganda. We even had funny people shouting out nonsense like how this race of people is the cause for this and that. All sorts of nonsense were being thrown out without even consideration of the outcome and these were done by adults. Fingers were pointed at one another. We were more separated than ever.

                   How ironic that it was our path to unity that led us to more hatred amongst our fellow man. But you see, race and religion alone does not determine the direction our country is going. Race classifies where that person came from, his origins. Religion is what we believe in strongly and we devoted ourselves to it. How can we use these two to blame and criticize others? Do we blame God for the rise in sea levels when humans are the cause of it?

                  What makes or breaks a nation is the way people think. The power of the mind can change many things if we have the will to do it. The Muslim world was once regarded to be the most feared and most powerful in the world once upon time ago. They had the greatest minds and great leaders that inspired their people to work harder but then look at them now? Some say it’s because they lack religion, maybe but I feel it is because the people’s minds were not united to support their leaders.”

“Ok, so you’re saying that the key to unity is or everyone to have the same goal and desire and I’m assuming from there we need to work at it as a team right? So how do we put the idea into everyone to work for the same goal?”

Her father locks eyes with her and tells it to her straight, “We brainwash them.”

“Haha so not funny, come on dad.”

“You didn’t think it was? Alright then, the answer is simple; education. Sure our country is very diverse but in the end our children all meet up in school. It is from there we teach them to love another and to work together. We instill moral values in them, guide them to be proper citizens so that they may one day be better leaders. When we adults see our children playing and working together, we realized that the answer has been right in front of us. To achieve unity, all we need to do is accept one another. Be friends with thy neighbour.

                    We eventually achieved peace and unity in our country after one man helped us open our ignorant minds to make us see how foolish we were. When we work together, we can do anything. So to answer your question, all we need to do is educate our next generation to be on the right path. In that sense, we’ll have fewer problems.”

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

- G. K. Chesterson -