A Deep Breath

When I write my political blogs, like this one is, I understand that I am writing them for myself. The people that agree with me already agree with me. Those that don’t are not going to be swayed.
That’s how it works. 

I get that. 

Frankly, our beliefs and convictions should be strong enough that a random person you don’t know can’t sway you. Saying that, we should also be open to hearing things we don’t want to hear about. Not the big things, the core values and beliefs, but really, even those should be re-evaluated from time to time. 

We need to do this because if we plant our feet on everything and refuse to ask “Why?” then our beliefs can be used against us. 

Some things should be basic. 

We don’t want to see innocent people hurt. 

We believe in love and hope. 

We believe people have a right to find their happiness and live it if it doesn’t harm someone else. 

We should believe in some form of freedom, some form of self determination, some form of compassion. 

This is all basic stuff. 

This is all stuff that shouldn’t be debated. 

But it is. 

Over and over and over again. 

Humans in general, and American specifically are obsessed with being in other people’s business. We want to be underneath one another’s beds. We want to be in each other’s bathrooms. We want to listen at the door. 

We want to feel good that someone is doing worse than us, isn’t as happy as we believe we are, or is doing something we think they shouldn’t. 

We want and need that so we can tell the world. 

So we can show the world. 

LOOK! Look at this person and what they are doing! Aren’t they AWFUL? Aren’t they wrong? 

We want to point fingers. 

We want to rally the troops to make bumper stickers, and flags, and social media posts. We want to dox them, to chase them, to hunt them because they are different. 

They are wrong. 

We cover our mirrors because we don’t want to see that we’re all the same in the end. All looking for peace, for happiness, and for love. 

But they, THOSE MONSTERS can’t be like us. 

They can’t want what we want because they are deviants. 

They don’t love…what?

Freedom?

America?

Our religion. 

We are a nation that loves to build walls.
BUILD THE WALL! 

We want to wall ourselves in without seeing that in doing so we’re trapping ourselves inside with the enemy. 

There’s a very thin line between what we love and what we hate and as we get to the core things, our love of, oh, say guns, that will align with some people, and our love of God will align with others, but there’s a point where our love of something else may put us on opposite sides of the wall from the people we once were allied with. 

Perhaps we have a gay child. 

Or maybe we support a social program. 

Or maybe we have friends who are foreign born and suddenly not considered worthy of American soil. 

It doesn’t make much for us to become enemies of one another. 

We are so focused on our hate, on our outrage that we are willing to forfeit everyone if it means we look like we’re in the right to certain people. 

And who are those people?

The people who are winding us up and pointing us at one another and then firing us like cannonballs into one another’s lives.  

And so rarely we question them, our leaders, our bosses, our politicians, our influencers, our holy men. 

So rarely do we ask – Why?

Why do you want this?

And we don’t ask because they won’t answer. 

They won’t answer because they know that the deeper we look at their reasons the sooner we’ll see that they are all revolved around self-interest. 

Their money. 

Their power. 

And once we see that they are using us like weapons against one another, not for some greater good but for their own selfish means well, the walls start to crumble. 

We start to see how connected to one another we are. 

We see that, sure, we don’t agree on everything, but we can learn to live with those disagreements. We can learn to swallow our tongues a little. We can learn to keep to our yards and lean over the fence only to say “hello” and not to see how much crap is on their lawn.
We can learn to do all of these things and to be a united nation of people, different, damaged, flawed, but all striving for the same thing – happiness. 

The thing is this – it’s political season so there are more pundits who know best, who know who we need to hate and fear. 

They are louder than ever. 

In ten months the volume will have lowered, though it won’t be on silent. 

We’re in a time where hate is the coin of the realm and it buys so very much. 

We have to work harder not to be bought, not to be used as weapons against one another. We need to ask – Why?

Why do you want me to fear?

Why do you want me to hate?

And if their answers make sense, if they jibe with what you believe and why you believe it. 

In the end it’s up to us to take down the walls between us and to find the ways for us to connect. The world has become a very dangerous place and we have enough enemies who hate us because we are simply from another country and live differently. There’s enough hate in the world. 

Do we really need more?

Can’t we just say – enough – and simply disagree?

And it really is, easier said than done, because people who hate the people I care about, who want to take our rights, and who want to steal my daughter’s rights I find very hard not to hate. I just need to remember that they are acting out of fear and that the only way through it is with steady patience and perseverance. But while I am not willing to give these people my hate, I will give them my fight, and I will offer up my voice because they will not silence me. 

And maybe that’s why I write these blogs. 

…c…