I spoke recently to students in Pennsylvania, as I do every summer. PFEW runs a business camp for 2000 students over 4 weeks each year. I speak each week to between 3-500 kids. It is my favorite place to speak. After I finish my presentation there are between 30-50 kids lined up to speak to me. They want to meet me and share their stories with me, which is my favorite part of the day. I want to share one with you that affected me again in a profound way.
When I speak I talk a lot about my children not looking like me because my wife is Filipino. Her Asian genes are dominant, hence my kids look like their mom. This story resonates with so many kids that I meet who are bi-racial. But it seems to really impact children who are adopted. They have been getting the question their entire life, “why don’t you look like your mom and dad?” A young girl came up to me and she was Chinese. She and her siblings were adopted by a white family. She told me that not only are they the only Asians in her school they are the only Asians in their town. She began to cry as she related a story to me about being somewhere with her mom and her brother and they were not allowed into the venue because their mom could not prove that she was their mother. All the person kept referring to was they couldn’t be from the same family since they were Asian.
Are we NOT there yet? Have people not realized that we are a global family? Have we lost all trust and compassion that we cannot take someone at their word? In the presence of children and their anguish can we not empathize and listen to our hearts? Have we become so polluted by the toxicity of a polarizing world and separated ourselves so much from the voice of reason…the voice of GOD? Rather than putting one more needle or one more degrading moment into these children’s lives couldn’t we just listen and love? Why can’t we just listen and love?