I went to see SELMA with a friend.

For those of you who don’t know, this movie is about Dr. Martin Luther King.

From the beginning of the movie, there was a feeling of uneasiness, like something hung in the air.  I felt on edge.

This movie touched the deepest part of me.  I felt different kinds of emotions, and they were exploding inside of me while I was watching this movie.  Sometimes, I felt like I was the one receiving the blow of a punch, right in my stomach.  It felt so real that it left me breathless.

This movie, which depicted certain moments in Dr. King’s life, during a time before I was born, brought a parallel to what is happening in the present time.  The more things change, the more they say the same…sadly.  We are brought more than 50 years back and yet, the same thing is happening now…black lives viewed as …not important.  Same fears, different times.

SELMA thought me different lessons about human beings:

–  Our capacity to cruelty when we live in fear

–  Our ability to forgive and move forward

–  Our ability to rally when we speak and understand the universal language of love

–  Our willingness to call on the Lord in our moments of fear, and draw from his strength

–  We have our own purpose, a specific reason for which we are uniquely created.

Dr. Martin Luther King had a purpose.  He was a powerful speaker and he had the ability to rally others to his cause.

I have to admit that during the movie, after Dr. King delivered one of his speech, I almost jumped from my seat and pumped my fist in the air.  Dr. King would have probably rallied me to his cause because it was more than a personal cause, it was a human cause.

After watching the movie, I was left with the following questions:

–  What makes someone continue to fight even after he or she feels defeated?

–  What makes one so dedicated to a cause that they won’t stop until they attain their goal?

–  What are the qualities that are part of the make up of these types of people?

I don’t usually talk about race, color: white, black, yellow, red, green. I never cared too much about how people looked on the outside, this is of little importance to me.  But when I watched movies like SELMA, it is impossible not to talk about race.

It saddens and angers me at the same time to see how black people were treated back then and in some places, we are still being treated the same way today.  It is mind boggling to me that some people can treat others differently because of the color of their skin, specially when none of us has any control over the color of the skin we were born with.

I mentioned before that I felt on edge while I was watching the movie.  What happened in those times is not part of my reality and yet, I was on edge.  Then, I started to imagine what it must have been like for someone who was or is living this reality.  I started to think how it must have affected him or her in their daily life on a physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual level…and I realized that they too, must have been continually , on edge.

Imagine living constantly in fear because someone has decided that you are not enough, that you are less than, that you don’t matter because of the color of your skin.  Imagine how deep this kind of behavior would have affected you.  Imagine…

Imagine how long it would take to remove these kinds of beliefs from your psyche. Imagine …

Imagine how much love it would take to replace those deep-seeded negative beliefs. Imagine…

Yes, slavery has ended a long time ago but the beliefs, unfortunately, still linger… and for the most part, those beliefs are unconscious.

I dare say that violence has a history.  I dare say that rebellion has a history and, there comes a time when anyone who has been oppressed for too long will say enough!!!

We’ve seen the news recently.  History has a way of repeating itself.

What will it take to stop the fear? Completely!