“Goodnight you princes of Maine,
you kings of New England.”
- John Irving,
The Cider House Rules
Susan and I have been friends for some 55 years. This week she asked me to not communicate with her anymore.
This was not the Shakespeare’s Juliet: “Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight til it be morrow.”
Nope it was a real kiss off: “Thanks for the memories. I would appreciate it if you would please delete me from any further blogs or correspondence in the future!”
OUCH!!
Nothing here about the “…morrow…” or until the ‘…next time…’ – no sir, it was as “…clear as mud…” – “fare thee well” – actually, I am uncertain about the ‘fare’ part.
Pretty clear, eh?
The backstory…
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, nor apparently was it with my friend Susan. I suppose I should say ‘ex-friend,’ but I love her still and while we have not seen each other much in recent decades, she is one of those folk for whom I am grateful.
For many years we were in pretty regular contact through mail (I mean actually hand written letter, mail), visits to her homes and mine, her three husbands and a daughter I saw as extended family.
The end was abrupt…
Over the years, I have wondered at the ease with which we categorize those with whom we differ. Maybe categorization should come second. For Susan, as best I can tell without judging, there always seemed to be an ‘other’ to fear. It might have been particular Christian religions or ethnic groups. Apparently, of late it has been a fear that Muslims have infiltrated the U.S. government beginning with the President and any number of others, all of whom have but one intent, and that is to bring our way of life to a grinding halt.
There is little doubt there are many who see America as a bastion of evil and who spend their time and energies doing all they can to destroy our way of life. There is little doubt that diligence and care are important in order to protect the homeland.
Having said that, the conflation of conspiracy theorists that expand patchworks of concern into the presence of evildoers behind every rock and tree is a bit much for my sensibilities.
The easiest thing to do, when confronted with complicated issues requiring thought, is to NOT think and simply slip everyone of a certain race, culture, gender, political party, economic or educational status into ideological mailboxes and move on. After all it takes time to ask questions and ferret out fact from fiction. It is so much easier to let someone else do it and simply agree.
Very seldom are these sorts of comments made about folks who look and sound like us, because…well, they look and sound like us (whoever ‘we’ are)!
After having received a few ‘…fear, fear, fear…’ the boogeyman is coming emails, I suggested maybe it would be better if we communicated on the things that are going on in our lives…the kinds of things we used to…I suggested that xenophobic (racial/cultural intolerance), ideological writings from either side of the political/social fringes, only promoted fear and doubt.
Social media is a great example of this. People post and agree with the things that they believe. One might argue as it relates to ideological postings that they are pointless exercises in self-flagellation. Gratifying only to the writer and those that agree.
In the bigger picture, Carl Sagan (the late astrophysicist) commented on a photo taken of the earth from 3.7 billion miles away. The photo became famously known as ‘The Pale Blue Dot.’ He writes in his book of the same title:
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The great Mandala…
It is not as if the universe has not seen this story played again and again and again. It is after all a struggle to find the good and disdain the evil that has occupied the minds of many seekers through time. All of us are part of the fabric of humanity, and yet we often seem to become so deeply focused on the background noise of difference, we neglect the common humanity we share.
This brings me back to my old – both in depth and length of time we have known one another – friend Susan.
I have an aversion to dogmatic emails of any ilk that are filled with ideology for the sake of making a point, rather than reason. I see these divisions of religious, cultural, political or gender related spectrums, as background noise keeping people…individual thinking, breathing, laughing, singing, loving people…from taking the small amount of effort and courage it takes to explore one another’s lives.
Danger lurks…
You see the trap, don’t you?
Because of my ‘Susan situation,’ it would be easy to be seduced into categorizing one of my oldest living friends and the ‘…horse she rides in on…’ into a mailbox labeled xenophobic. YES, it would be so easy to label her as an unthinking ideologue – patting my enlightened self on the back. But that, of course, would only cause me to become content in my own self-righteousness and turn her into something that she is not, nor has ever been.
She, that soul with whom I have found decades of resonance is a loving, caring and thoughtful human being. I choose to continue to think of her that way.
While she appears to be willing to judge me for my apparent blindness to all that is clear to her and those with whom she recycles material that labels and fosters distrust and fear, I refuse to return the favor.
I’ll get over this, but I am in mourning….
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