I’m a cynic. I trust no one and no thing until, well until I’m good and ready. Especially when facts and figures about green and government, poverty and hunger, and other woes of the world get thrown around. I’m the first to stand back and wait. I don’t jump because I know that hype sells.

What I’m getting at is repeated so often it’s become cliche, but it still holds: the truth is hard to find. And once we do track it down, how true is it on the scale of truthfulness? Sometimes we want so badly to believe the good and have faith in the progress, that we don’t question. We just scoop up and run.

There are some things we were told, that we wholeheartedly took as truths – Come to find out, they told us wrong!

For example, supposedly we’re better fed and have fewer deaths from war and at least slavery is over and done with, right? Wrong. More Americans than ever are on food stamps, more people are dead from the conflict in eastern Congo than any war since WWII, and there are more slaves at work today than at any other time in history. Unbelievable. And real.

Why are we so willing to believe the people or organizations that distribute the erroneous information? Are we so gullible – or just too tired?

In moments where my heart begins to sink at the gravity of this realization, and I am prepared to throw my arms up in disbelief and hopelessness, I’m then inspired by my colleagues, the writers and friends and others I’ve met, online and off, who won’t swallow the information they are given as if it’s a free lunch. They question everything, and oh how I love people who question everything.

Here’s to gratitude and thoughtfulness in 2011.

Image _lmaji_

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