peace

Humanitarian Day is a holiday that honors the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by promoting unity, remembrance, and respect. Here are a few ways you might wish to celebrate.

Light a candle in your home for all of the freedom fighters who have passed on—Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Miep Gies, Mother Theresa, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Gandhi—any of your heroes who have fought for freedom. You could also light one for all of the victims who have suffered and died due to slavery, sexual slavery, and violence both in the past as well as those who suffer today.

Vow to be a humanitarian. Talk about what it means to be one with your family. Decide together how you’ll do this—by volunteering, spreading a message of peace, acceptance, and love, traveling to other areas to volunteer as well as expand your global awareness, etc.

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We already know the healthful benefits of riding a bicycle. A great source of low-impact aerobic exercise, biking can help elevate your mood, delay aging, improve your heart’s health, and burn calories. It’s also an eco-friendly form of transportation that’s easy on your body while still giving you a chance to build stamina, reduce your blood pressure and even hang out with friends. Those are some pretty decent reasons to take up biking if you don’t bike already.

But you can also help humanity by biking. Plenty of celebrities, from Lance Armstrong to Matthew McConaughey, have all biked for charity. Now you can, too!

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According to the United Nations, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is the “rape capital” of the world. In the past twelve years, 200,000 women and girls have been raped during the violence and genocide that had riddled the country.

Rapists are often Congolese soldiers, which are said to grossly lack discipline as well as pay. During the genocide in the country, more than 500,000 people have been displaced, driven away from their own homes and villages. Villages have been set afire, hundreds have been murdered, and women—and even some men—have been raped in the conflict.

18,000 peacekeepers, diplomatic visits, and peace treaties have done nothing to curb the violence.

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Volunteer at a homeless shelter, nursing center, or food kitchen or hospital.

Share your voice and sing a beautiful song.

Offer comfort to a friend in need.

Write anonymous notes to people, thanking them or telling them how wonderful they are—a colleague, a waitress, a friend.

Accept everyone you meet for who they are—no matter what color, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion.

Adopt a child, or become a foster parent.

Listen to your language for an entire day; think about what you would change, if anything, in how you speak and how you address people.

Treat everyone the way you wish to be treated.

Expand the music in your home to include world tunes and rhythms from different cultures.

Volunteer for a suicide, rape crisis, or abuse hotline.

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There is a word the Greeks used that would suffice to define man’s assumptions of superiority, and that word is hubris—an overbearing arrogance that often resulted in punishment from the gods, as Arachne found when she boasted at being better at the loom than the goddess Athena and soon found herself to be a spider.

When humans assert themselves over other humans and claim superiority based on skin, class, race, gender, or other differences, injustice is the result—either in the form of unjust thoughts and assumptions made that trickle into the daily actions of humans like dirty tap water, or in outright violation of human and civil rights, such as owning property, voting, marrying, or even having the simple right to be alive or not be a slave.

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