Ubuntu: "I am, because of we"

UBUNTU 

"I am, because of we"

An anthropologist filled a basket with delicious fruits and placed it under a tree. He then told a group of young boys from the African village to run to the tree and whoever reached it first could have the fruit.  He was totally surprised to see the boys join hands and walk to the tree together.  And together, they shared the fruit.

He asked one of the boys "why didn't you run to get the fruit?"

The boy replied, "Ubuntu."  Translated, it means, "I am, because of we."

I'm pretty sure we could gather up all of the knothead Republicans in the United States Senate and House, ask them to arrive at a solution to today's biggest problems, and never in a hundred years would they come to the answer,  "Ubuntu."

I won't accept the argument that the problem is with both parties, either.  The Democrats have been fighting to make life better for workers and others less fortunate in America for decades. It is the very definition of the word "liberal."  It this the very battle between Democrats and Republicans that has been raging for years.  It is the age-old, seemingly unworkable difference between liberals with open and wide-ranging  points of view versus Republicans with narrow and selfish capitalistic thinking.

What a nation we could be if we found a way to come together like those young boys in Africa.  They have found the solution at a young age:  "Ubuntu!"

We have been working on it for more than 200 years and we are further apart today than we've been in since the Civil War.  In today's political upheaval, I cannot even dream of the two parties joining hands and marching anywhere - not even to a free drinks and steak dinner!

If those little boys in Africa were given the solution by their elders and found it was a life worth living, we can do no less.  If they found a way to live by helping each other, how can we possibly do less?

Ubuntu!