I reflected this morning on the shallowness of our people at this time…the diminishing of spirit by the narrow confines of what is acceptable and what is not. A friend called and was commenting about how her brother in law said she probably would not get a particular job regardless of her brilliance and dynamism because she is overweight. How pathetic. And yet, his voice is just one of a multitude who are married to a particular image of what we all must be. This limitation…this overriding fear of not being acceptable, and narrowing the range as far as facial features and texture of personality…it is pathetic. Look at the movies and television. Are there any real looking people on the programs? Very few. Look back to the movies in the past, the Frank Capra films, etc. There were plenty of character faces that added to the dimension of our character. Now the guidelines are so limiting that many people feel they are unacceptable, and there is no way for them to be acceptable because they cannot or will not conform to what we have set up as the stereotype. This shallow view concerns me because it is causing the demise of us as a country and a people. We are casting off so many valuable souls because they don’t have the right look, the right education, the right attitude, the right beliefs. We have lost our humor and our capacity for incorporating many ways. We have opened some doors, but closed others…and the doors we have opened are only to those who conform to the stereotypical framework that has been established by a shallow media.