Never Mind

I have something to say. It’s about disappointment and discouragement.

I live a solitary life. Whether that life chose me, or I chose it, is beside the point now.

But, that’s what I wanted to talk about—

Choices.

They’re not simple. Ever. I’ve gotten to the point where I read a post by one of my friends on social media, and I nod my head in agreement with all the points they make in favor of justice, respect, and equality, until they get to the end and they say something like, “And if you don’t agree with me, go screw yourself.”

You know how sometimes, especially in the winter, the wind can blow so cold and hard across your face that you literally can’t breathe? There’s too much air, too fast. That’s how I feel right now.

Maybe it’s because I’ve finally realized that I’m actually starting to get old. Everybody makes jokes about it. I make jokes about it! Sometimes I make a joke because nothing seems to be funny anymore, and I need something to be funny.

I am both a Christian and a Buddhist. It was my own values and principles that led me to each creed, both separately and together. No one persuaded me, I persuaded myself. It’s important to me, even in the depths of solitude, to know that I am not alone in choosing what is important to me, and that there are other people out there who are making a disciplined practice of living according to their values and principles.

I think perhaps what is robbing me of the breath to speak up, is that I just can’t bring myself to let someone else dictate to me what I should think and feel, much less what I believe. I’m reminded of a quote from a movie: The Last of the Mohicans. I was so struck by this quote when I first heard it, that I wrote it down. It doesn’t really matter which character said it, it stands on its own—

“I would rather make the gravest of mistakes than surrender my own judgment.”

This morning, I finally realized what was hurting me, as I looked at what my friends, and their friends, are posting on social media. It’s still hard to put into words, but I’ll try. It’s that almost everyone seems to me to be missing something. It’s that I can’t figure out what anyone is striving for, on their own account. It’s that I try to see connections between the way my own set of principles influences my judgment and the choices that I make, and the way other people’s principles influence their choices.

I go along with them happily as they announce that they want justice, respect, and equity, but I stumble when it seems that they want someone else to give it to them; when it’s not at all evident that they are seeking ways to give justice, respect, and equity to others.

I see story after story of abuse, exploitation, fear, persecution, and subjection. I see outrage. I see deep grief. I see resentment. I see desperation. To me, these are real, especially when they are told in the first person. But I get scared when I see lies and distortions creeping in.

I get deeply uneasy when I see people fail to make connections; to investigate, question, evaluate, and learn.

I am abashed whenever I see someone thoughtlessly return abuse with abuse; fear with fear; hate with hate; hostility with hostility. Even worse, I am shaken when I see someone return abuse in response to respect; hostility in response to honest questions; hate in response to a call for accountability.

There is no way out of this morass of misery unless each of us can find the willpower to look outward, away from the sinkhole of our own feelings, toward the reality of another person. And then do it again and again and again, until it becomes second nature; until it eventually spreads even farther, into a compassionate awareness of our shared humanity.

I am shamed by the pandemic of self-absorption among my fellow humans that allows slogans and hyperbole to masquerade as truth; that lets insecurity and the desire to be accepted goad us into jumping on the bandwagon with no thought of our own ethical accountability; that reassures us that we are right to assess our self-worth by the degree to which we are accepted by others; that permits us to measure our principles by the intensity of our feelings; that gives us a ready-made excuse for abandoning our own judgment out of an abject and unworthy fear that we will be “left out” or disliked.

I am humiliated by the fact that justice and equality can be manipulated into becoming nothing more than a fad, and a passing fad at that; a fad that scorns any consideration of the complexity and intractability of the issues that honest and honorable people have been trying to resolve for decades.

I am stymied by the weird cognitive dissonance of those who are unconsciously (or consciously, perhaps) using racist arguments to counter racism; sexist attitudes to promote sexual and gender equality; jingoistic rhetoric to refute jingo-ism; political affiliation to denigrate political affiliation.

I am bewildered by those who can somehow refuse to see the inevitable connections between cause and effect— those odd folks who are able to imagine that consequences are malleable; that outcomes can be persuaded to change by the exercise of wishful thinking; that mistakes made due to ignorance are somehow excused by that very same ignorance.

Most of all, I am left orphaned by the insouciant arrogance that finds it easy to ignore the results— the immediate and irremediable results— of choices made with no sense of accountability. Choices that look like they were made by bullies. Choices that look like they were made by heedless children. Choices that look like they were made by profiteers. Negligent choices. Reckless and selfish choices. Unremorseful and entitled choices. Conceited and self-important choices. Choices that ignore the reality that we will all bear the consequences, no matter who made the choices.

Well, I can’t ignore that reality. I haven’t been able to for a long time. As both a Christian and a Buddhist, I guess that means it’s my job

to pick up the fallen crosses from the wrecked streets

to enter the splintered Dharma gates after the looters have gone

to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go—   

no, wait, that’s Star Trek…….     

Never mind.

(If I have a point, and I’m not sure I do, it has something to do with generosity and neighborliness, I suppose. I’d like to recommend those qualities wholeheartedly to everyone, and I do mean everyone.)