Living in Harmony Is But a Dream

by Ernie McCray

Living in harmony is but a dream.
A beautiful
life-affirming dream
that we’ve denied ourselves
because of the innerworkings
of how we treat each other
in the scheme of things.

Like here’s what I mean.

The other day I responded to a meme alleging that AOC, Ms. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, was not too bright.

I saw her, however, in a different light, sharing that, to me, she was an exceedingly bright woman, fighting the good fight for people like me.

And some dude went crazy over my “litany” and laid out a list of AOC’s sins and misgivings that seemed a mile long, dismissing my thoughts all over the place.

I just let that stuff fly by. But he did say something that I decided to not let go by, his notion that I had posted my “ignorant garbage on the internet” because my television told me to.

I sent a word or two about how I couldn’t have survived 83 years in this country as a Black man by allowing wool to be pulled over my eyes.

So, let me repeat:

Living in harmony is but a dream.
A beautiful
life-affirming dream
that we’ve denied ourselves
because of the innerworkings
of how we treat each other
in the scheme of things.

I sent my Facebook friends, “my choir,” a summary of this little dip in my day in a poem, in the spirit of the struggle. In a light tone, I would say.

And a few smiley emojis and a “Right on” and a “Teach, brother, teach” or two
came my way.

Nothing like a little harmonizing to spruce up your day.

Then “Bam!” I’m reading:

“Nobody gives a damn about your age. You think old people can’t be boot-licking zaddy-loving minstrels?” and then this young brotha goes on in his freestyle sermon to call me “Uncle Ben,” crying because “The man” had hurt my “widdle feelin’s and he waxed hysterically about my “generation of our people” dropping the ball, leading his generation down a wrong path, trying to integrate with “melanin-deficient miscreants,” doing a “going along to get along tap dance” and about how we once owned stores and banks and cafes and hotels before my era stupidly threw it away so we could patronize the businesses of “beasts!”

I didn’t know, as I came up for air, that my head could spin 360 degrees. This rant was unbelievable to me.

So, now I do solemnly swear that,
living in harmony is but a dream…

Oh,
you know the routine,
I suspect,
wonderful
and promising
and all that,
something that’s
not much of a reality
in our society
due to huge amounts
of disrespect.

But we must hold fast to dreams of living in harmony because without some generation, at some time down the line, declaring that not doing so is extraordinarily unwise, I’m wondering how humanity can survive.

Because the challenges can’t be faced by a people straddling a divide between doing what’s wrong and doing what’s right when it comes to bettering their lives.

In the scheme of things.