Responsibility to Others...

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of being. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

Cheryl Strayed

I do not know if you are up on the news, but we are about to transition from one political party in the White House from the other. It has not been an easy transition. I need to talk about this. I hope you will be kind and gracious to me. First off, I am struck by how winners and losers say the exact same thing but from the opposite perspective. I remember when the BLM protests and riots were going on last summer and many folks said that many of the protesters were peaceful and some were not. On Wednesday January 6th, when the protests and riots were going on over the election of Joe Biden, many folks said that many of the protesters were peaceful and some were not. When we feel passionately FOR something, we tend to think that “our side” behaves righteously and the “other side” are violent thugs. Theories are posited so that we can hold onto our certainty of our righteousness. Both sides. Both sides doing the exact same thing, just from an opposite perspective. Both sides. (Just to be clear, I do not think there is a moral equivalency between protests and insurrection, I’m just saying that both sides have a tendency to demonize the other. In situations like this, there is always more diversity in those who attend than we are able to acknowledge in our certainty.)

It is at times like this that I wish for a magic wand so that I can sprinkle it over us all. I wish everyone practiced the 12-steps so rigorously that it would no longer be in our DNA or behavior to point fingers at others BUT instead we would have a deeply ingrained propensity to reflect deeply about our own self-righteousness and certainty. When my wand arrives from Amazon, I am going to sprinkle the s*&* out of that thing, but alas, it is lost in transit. Friends, this is not right. I know I am only responsible FOR myself, but I am also responsible TO others. I do not want to talk about such things, but I feel that I need to be clear about my perspective. Here is what I want us to do, with our ordinary, daily life:

1. Love one another, especially those who differ from us.

2. It would be so amazingly cool if we stopped sharing our opinions and instead spent our time curious about the places where our opinions, perception of fact, etc., might be off base. This is not a rejection of our freedom, it is a repudiation of license to share our certainty in favor of exercising the liberty and responsibility to love one another. Humility should always question our sense of righteous indignation.

3. If we share our opinion, for God’s sake, can we please stop using social media and ONLY do it one-to-one where dialogue can be part of the conversation? PLEASE?!?

I so wish we as a community would consider this.