The Popcorn Stand: There is justice; justice word of the year

There is justice in the world after all. While we’re already into 2019, I think it’s still appropriate to take one last look back at 2018. I was disheartened to read that words like toxic (Oxford) and misinformation (Dictionary.com) were chosen as words of the year for 2018.

But Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2018 is justice. Merrian-Webster saw a 74 percent increase in how much the word justice was looked up over 2017.

Yes there are those controversial things like Robert Mueller’s investigation and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings that likely led to some of the increase when it came to looking up the word justice. But I think Merriam-Webster put it best when it stated its reason for selecting justice as the word of the year:

“The concept of justice was at the center of many of our national debates in the past year: racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice,” the company said.

This reassures my belief that we’re all really the same, all we want is justice and to be treated with dignity. Yes, we may differ on what’s just. But if we understand our differences and why one person’s sense of justice is different than another person’s sense of justice, then we’ll have a lot more justice. Or something like that.

But I also believe for the most part most of us have the same sense of justice. We see something that isn’t right and want to do something about it. Paul wrote about this concept in the Bible essentially writing we need to not only “expose the darkness” but do something about it. Within reason of course.

Even today when somebody “exposes the darkness” and does something about it — fixes a wrong and makes it right — we rejoice.

Now that’s justice.

— Charles Whisnand