Today is December 1, 2012. Today I woke up in reasonable health, warm, and my mind already racing about what is to take place throughout my day. My days for the most part, are started with reflection and prayer to set my mind and spirit up for what is before me. For sanity and humility sake, I try to think gratefully about the things that could really be wrong in my life because of things that I’ve done, yet I’ve somehow escaped consequences that should be. I should be homeless, I should be sick; I should be dead. Real talk. So I am humble in knowing that while there are things I don’t have to deal with on a daily basis, there are some who, for whatever reason, do. It has nothing to do with anyone being better than someone else, it’s the cards we were dealt.
Today is World AIDS Day. I am not aware of how many people I know who’ve dealt with knowing or being someone living with HIV/AIDS, but I know I have loved, touched, hugged and have laid beside someone who did, is, and was. I don’t know, I am never unaware that I too could’ve been infected at some point my life. If for nothing else, all 3 of my children were conceived the old-fashioned way. It only takes one time, one encounter, one night, one minute for any one to be infected. I cannot stomach those who still think HIV/AIDS is a gay man’s disease. The woman in the Congo is not a gay man, neither is the little boy in Bangladesh. And the gay man who does have it in Atlanta, is not the woman in Harlem, or the senior citizen in Chicago. Closed-mindedness is corny. Anyone can be infected and affected, and can hit closer to home at any given moment.
“World AIDS Day, held each year to commemorate the millions of lives affected by the AIDS epidemic, has a new mission: “Getting to Zero” by 2015. World AIDS Day brings together people from around the world to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the pandemic. The day is an opportunity for public and private partners to spread awareness about the status of the pandemic and encourage progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care in high prevalence countries and around the world.”(World Health Organization- www.who.int)
For facts and information on the HIV/AIDS, visit http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs360/en/index.html
