For the last five years, I’ve been posting short stories and quotes, etc., attacking no one. My immediate instinct has always been to create a dialogue when there’s a deep divide in opinions. As a society, we are so busy attacking each other; we are not connecting the dots. The most potent democratic country on earth, dying a slow death, as the rule of law, can now be interpreted through fundraising. This post, like all others, was inspired by the quote. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good MEN (WOMEN) to do nothing.”

When I was a child, I learned to play, “Connect the dots.” It was a game presumable created by a graphic artist whose children had trouble in chronological sequence, who invented the dot-to-dot as an amusement. When they began to count correctly and connected a series of numbered dots, a picture would result. I became addicted, and the benefit to me was twofold. Numbers became instinctive, and the curious desire to see the image became a mindset, a vision into the unknown.

Nowadays, in adult discourse, the phrase “connect the dots is the ability (or inability) to associate one idea with another without a picture. Even with a picture, a closed mind is the stepping stone of a blind eye, regardless of the subject. As adults, it all comes down to wanting to listen in the realm relative to one’s self-interest.

When I was a Facilitator (1970s) in Race Relations, the sign above my door read: “A CLOSED MIND has NO relativity HERE.” Intending to plant a seed. I then would begin each class with the statement. “For a want of conversation is the ingredient needed for growth, while anger and hate will be the detriments to a progressive society.”  Because it was the military, there was no choice in attendance—a captive audience with textbook body language of racial bias compounded by contemptuous words, sprinkled with silent complicity, as they anointed themselves with the avoidance of any inquiry for understanding. It was virtual training for me, connecting the dots in real time on the analogy of the blind eye.