Interesting Times
These are certainly interesting times aren’t they! I often think of that old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times! as we live through current life challenges.
I woke up this morning thinking that one of the things that is lost is integrity around the words we speak (“we” being a general, cultural, even universal word). If we disagree with someone of a different race we are labeled “racist”. If we disagree with someone of a different gender, we are called “sexist”. If we disagree with someone of a different class we are called “class conscious”, “elitist”, “bourgeois” or worse.
Well, guess what….what if what we are doing is just disagreeing with an idea or stance on something? Innocent enough isn’t it? Not in today’s world. We have to all be vanilla, no taste, no flavor, everyone the same. What happened to “Viva la difference!”? What happened to the right of individual thought?
This is a subject way beyond the scope of this blog and way beyond the scope of my understanding. All I know to do in these challenging times is to stay in my center, stay in my own integrity, be true to myself and my values, and to let those people who rant daily about the “left”, the “right”, the “center”, rant, and I will keep an open mind and open heart. I will allow others to be who they are and think as they do, and respect them in spite of our differences. I will listen to all viewpoints thoughtfully and then make up my own mind. We may not agree on everything but certainly just being human makes us more alike than dissimilar in our desires and needs and wants.
So please don’t tell me what to think, what to do, what to believe in. And I won’t tell you. But I WILL listen to you and promise you that I will respect your viewpoint. Last time I checked, this was a country that was built on healthy differences of opinion and compromise and thoughtful negotiations. We embraced people from different backgrounds, economic status, and religious beliefs. Out of the differences we built a country that had variety and “spice” to it!
I guess I am showing my age here, but I am totally bewildered by how things are these days. The wrong seem to be right, the right wrong; the high, low, the low, high; the truth, lies, the lies, truth. It all seems so upside down and twisted.
It feels as if we are all being challenged here. Instead of denigrating, putting down, sneering at those who don’t believe as we do, maybe we should be sitting down with them and really listening to why they think as they do. Maybe we will learn something that will enhance our own way of thinking. Maybe our thinking will be expanded. Maybe we will still choose not to agree but maybe we will just come to appreciate the depth of someone else’s faith or belief or see why they think the way they do.
What do you think about this? And why? Let’s all sit back and listen respectfully to what each of us has to say with no pre-judgement, just an open mind and heart. We may or may not change our own thoughts, but we will be richer by far for having considered a different way of being or a different approach to life.