There has never been a greater distance between me and many of the people I know. For the majority of people I have called friend, and for many of my family members, communication is almost impossible lately.
This is of course because of worldly events, specifically domestic politics. Even before the recent events, while talking to many of friends, online or in person (or by letter, which I use, and still prefer over all other ways) I felt a great amount of stress, which I likened to tiptoeing through a mine field. Always below the surface in them is an anger.
Some friends are aware that I disagree with them. They know my positions, and they know that I voted differently from them in the last Presidential election. Perhaps they figure, based on their own news media, that surely I must have changed my mind by now, and have come to my senses, and will vote the same as them in the upcoming election.
Perhaps they know the truth---that unless they have changed their side, we will vote differently from each other again in November.
None of this difference between us bothers me in the sense of friendship. I feel no anger or animosity towards them. I am, I believe, perfectly capable of calm discussions, about politics or other subjects. I have no need to hash over our differences, but if they come up, I feel capable of addressing them with a sense of charity and respect towards the other person, and to answer with honesty and candor any question they pose.
Experience has taught me that for those who hold such deep anger about these issues, there is no way to avoid politics in any lengthly conversation. Some of them are genuinely unaware of the difference, figuring that all sane and decent people must agree with them,
They will smoke out the difference, sometimes when I fail certain purity tests they provide me, to test my loyalty to certain ideologies and positions. Sometimes they bait me, thinking that if I disagree with them, I am surely stupid and can be easily led into outrageous statements that prove that they are right and I am horrible.
Experience has taught me that when the contempt arises, or the anger flashes out in full, I become a stranger to them. I am no longer any person familiar to me. It is as if I never knew you, is what they communicate to me. They have names and labels ready for me. I've been accused of murder. Surely you can't be one of those people? You're joking, right?
All of this can happen without my barely saying a word. I usually stand back and let the other person vent. I try to understand the hurt place they are coming from. I never argue, even as try may try to put me on the spot, as if we are arguing on Facebook and they are summoning the posse of our mutual friends to shame me. Nor do I seek to justify or explain. Of course I will pray for them, extra hard.
Bitter experience has taught me that once this spasm of anger erupts, and once the look of fear or contempt comes into their eyes, then the friendship is beyond repair at least for the foreseeable future. Only in the case of blood kin can the relationship be repaired.
There is nothing to do but to go away and let it cool down, but this will takes years, maybe decades, if ever. Most of them will not seek me out to mend fences. If any of them did reach out, I would welcome communication with them as if they were a long-lost brother or sister. True bonds of friendship or so amazingly rare these days, and each one that I still possess is a treasure that I will go far out of my way to keep alive. Communicating with them, even over normal thing, can feel like passing coded resistance messages in an occupied and conquered nation.
Fortunately there have been only a few total write-offs of friends due to anger. For most of my friends, I have not spoken to them in so long that we remain in a state of quantum-like ignorance of what each other thinks about the world, and this is probably a very good thing. I send Christmas cards to them, and for a select few, I even offer the chance to meet up, thinking they may be an exception to the rules I listed above, or may have even become sympathetic to my side on certain issues.
I feel sad for the one that I must keep at arm's length for now. Better to keep silent and hope that one day we can speak.
I feel sad for the time we live in. But I can't change the way I see the world. It would be refreshing to have one person of the other side, at least once, be curious about why I see the world as I do, and ask me why I hold hold the positions I do. They think they know this already, I would wager, and the answer satisfies them about my character.
If the past and present is any measure, I vote as I do with great enthusiasm, hoping, and perhaps even expecting, that for the good of everyone, and for the nation, and for the world, that their side will be defeated in a landslide of unprecedented historic proportions, in a such a way that will shake them out of their possession by wrath. I think the country is begging for this kind of reset, which is why it will happen, just as it has happened before, in my living memory. But this time it probably needs to be even bigger than previous times.
I had never wanted to crush their side, as they have wanted to destroy us (even with physical violence), but an electoral wipeout of this magnitude seems like the only thing that will save the country at this hour.
Yet that is the only will I need to see enforced. I know that almost every horrible thing they imagine happening in the wake of their defeat is complete hallucinations.
One side is going to win and one side is going to lose. There is no way around that. You can wish the sides to not exist but they do exist, and one is going to win this battle and one side is not. I think we all realize that now. There is no retreating. But there may be mass defections from one side coming soon. I think I can speak for everyone on this side of the battle that we were welcome you, without reservation and without condition of changing your mind on just about anything except who we are.
Whatever God wills in this matter, I will accept of course. He has a better view of things than I do. Perhaps he has a creative solution in mind that I haven't thought of, that no human being has yet thought of. If God strips the nation of its hedge of protection, we will surely suffer the joke of oppression. What do I pray for specifically? I pray that God spares us that. And I pray for peace of course.
No shootings. No violence. No massacres. No assaults. For everyone, everywhere. If you really needed to hear that from me, then we have work to do, with understanding each other.
And if you are one of those friends I mentioned, if you can bear what I've written above, and ready for the challenge of speaking with each other again, consider this an open invitation. I welcome your words remotely and hope that we can sit down in friendship in the near future. You can scream at me if you need. I've been screamed at by the best of them. I can be as stoic as it takes while you speak your mind at me, if that is what is needed to bring us together again. We can make friendly wagers about the election. All I ask is after the (figurative) smoke has cleared, that we can speak as one person to another, and not as virtual representations.
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