Friends, Foes, Admired 'sans peur et sans reproche', and Nothingburgers
Human interrelationships exist in various forms, serve various purposes, and mixed all together create for each of us our own 'heaven' or 'hell' here on earth. Life, bluntly, is a mixture of heaven and hell. It is not clear either can exist without the other. In youth, a day full of new and exciting challenges is a good day. In the terminational years, a good day is mostly an uneventful, healthy, relaxed day. In youth every victory over foes and obstacles is a celebratory day; in later years the attitude is more "the hell with it". Victories of most any kind, except involving good health, become far less significant. Youth and age are reflected in this little scene: Two people who dislike each other are approaching each other on a narrow sidewalk. One says with fire in his/her eyes, "I never step aside for scoundrels" and firmly walks straight ahead. The other smiles, steps aside and says, "I sir/madam, always do". That is a difference between age and youth.
A vast horde of humanity are 'nothingburgers' to us. The 100 million people predicted to starve to death in the next few years are virtually nonexistent in our mind. The 2.1 million Vietnamese killed in the senseless Vietnam War were 'nothingburgers' in our own psyche. And the list goes on. There simply is no way our minds are capable of remotely connecting, in any meaningful way, with these millions of 'nothingburgers'. They may just as well be on another planet in terms of our own little world. Our own 'world' is always, by reality, rather small. Our world starts off extremely small and limited, then expands, then if we live long enough, contracts and ends up extremely small and limited again. I guess some never live in any larger world. "I am" plead each of us, but nobody listens all that much, and our place in God's evolutionary history and process is rarely even a footnote. All the ado about nothing ends up nothing in some respects, but in other respects, at least in terms of our own reality, life's adventures have always loomed large, challenging, and in our face big time.
In the end, having been stymied trying to understand ourselves in the kind of meaningful way we seek, we look at others and often wonder if we understand others at all. We often see evil in those whom many others see good; we often see good in those many others see evil. We accept rules and ethical principles, but they get bent and broken as needed, and justice or fairness is often sacrificed for personal, family, ethnic, or national gain. The Law of the Jungle has always surfaced as needed. All the religious, patriotic and family values bullshit renders fairness, justice and tolerance elusive more often than not. For all of us, in varying degrees, justice is self centered. We care less about truth than how we 'feel' about something. There is a part of George Bush in all of us. The evolutionary process has a long way to go. We pretend and act as if we are some kind of end product of God's evolutionary process, that each of us is a special Diestically created individual made after God's image. We love illusions, and maybe we need illusions for mental contentedness. To me, mental contentedness and the greatest achievements in life are based on accepting your own limitations, accepting the limitations of others, appreciating diversity, defending those unfairly attacked or getting the short end of the stick in life, and accepting the realities of how God's evolutionary process works. To the extent we fail in any of these areas, we are agitated, frustrated, ungenerous, narrow-minded, provincial, mean-spirited beings. Complicating all of this, mixing up the clarity of any of this, is the role of genetics and environment. 'Judge not, that ye be not judged' reflects the limitations placed on any of us to be Judge and Jury for others on any of the more complicated nuances of human behaviors. This is where most of the emotional issues of religion and politics thrive---on ignorance and self serving faith based notions.
'No man is an island' is one of those self apparent truisms. How much of an island varies. Our looks, our environment, our personality, our mentors, our heroes, and our enemies influence just how much of an island any of us are. We all can't be Barackobaminians---attracting friends by the thousands. Whether he wins or loses he has a large legion of admiring friends of all kinds. There is, amazingly, little provincialism, ethnicism, culturism, or religious sectism about his being. He escapes what few can ever hope to escape. Still, most everyone has some friends and those who don't should. I don't think sectarian religious dogma should be taught in schools, but tolerance and appreciation of human diversity should be pushed hard. I regret the many kids back in school when I was young who were ostracized because of their looks, their religious affiliation, their ethnicity, their lack of athletic or academic abilities, and anything else I have left out. Most ostracism is not overt, but subtle and operates by omission, lack of inclusion.
Friendship is hard to define. Whatever it is, it is usually temporary. Even many marriages are temporary, and if not legally terminated, in spirit effectively terminated. Probably most friendships are friendships of convenience----in the same boat together so you learn to row together. Neighborhood friends, teammates, club members, fellow workers, church members, dorm members, etc, are all friendships of convenience. Old friendships fade, in varying degrees, mostly because people change with age, circumstances change with age, personas wear thin, distances change, and in short, things just are different. If a group starts out with 10 close friends, the base will eventually dwindle to a handful, if any at all. Like dissolution of marriages, dissolution of friendships can be amiable or contentious. I always admire those who go through non contentious divorces. What no longer works, doesn't work and there doesn't have to be blame. Only a sapheaded fool would turn a former good thing into something that deserves to be detested. And likewise, only a sapheaded fool would try to force the continuation of a friendship or marriage which has lost any real meaning or enrichment to present-day living. Some people thrive on nostalgic reunions of this or that sort. Nothing wrong with that either. Others find such things shallow, meaningless, irrelevant, and a nuisance. Nothing wrong with that either. The latter find such events mostly gawking, and endless cleverisms, trivialities, and mindless chitchat. I have never been to any class reunion except a high school class of a school where I taught high school for two years. Except for a handful of students it seemed surreal. Maybe I would go to a reunion of some sort if I lived close enough to attend for one day and be back home the same day. To me, when things are over they are over. Till death there is always a new chapter. Seems pointless to spend time or money to participate in a lot of delicate tip-toeing around, affected toleration, self promoting your own status or achievements, feigned laughter, and a banal dribble which I, for one, can only tolerate for a few hours. If it is to extend past that, and any real substance is gone from the relationships, the whole thing becomes a useless waste of time. I would rather give the expense and time to someone in need of my attention and support. That is why I probably like to always have pets of some sort or another. I can be the biggest jerk and fool about anything at anytime and a pet will always thrive on my attention and support. Strange, but the relationship between a pet and owner never changes while the relationship between two humans invariably will change for the majority of relationships. Go figure that.
The notion that human friendships should, will, or ought to last a lifetime flies in the face of reality. More realistically there are simply windows of opportunity for friendship which exist for finite periods of time. It is these opportunities which provide meaning to our lives, give zest to our lives, give us a chance to give or receive support from others, sustain our faith in the bonhomie of human interaction and boost our own sense of contentment. Few, if any, things in life have any permanence. For those who insist it must or just has to be otherwise, life will be a bumpy contentious bitter endeavor. There are those who go through life who you sense smiling will cause their face to fracture, like it is their way or the highway, like compatibility is a packaged permanence, like heading down different forks in life's pathways is an act of betrayal, like diversity is wrapped in right or wrong, like respect must be lost with fading friendship and punishment be meted out to the perceived culprit. Those who spend their lives trying to teach others a lesson or two over faith based self imposed beliefs, of course derived from superior perception or God whispered dogmas, will be a nuisance to others in society. They are the real disruptors, the ones behind so much conflict, so many unjust laws, so many of the killing fields of history. They are the ones who shrill away about family values because, in truth, they can only tolerate a small clique of close knitted braced-up brain operatives within their family/social cell. In their own minds they are doing good, driven by self imposed duty and beliefs, and are on the path to heavenly glory, or at the very least clearing annoying clutter from their life's mindset. Life is like a play with many acts, so many varied and unexpected experiences, so many mood changes, so many belief changes, so many hurdles, so many acts of kindness, so many acts of disrespect, so many acts of hostility, so many chances to be ignored, so many chances to be used, so many chances to win, so many chances to lose, so many endless friends and enemies of the moment, so many chances to laugh---to be sad---to be thankful---to regret---to be kind---to be unkind---to be tolerant---to be intolerant---to find common ground----to support peace----to support war----to spread good fortune---to hoard good fortune---to be fair----to be selfishly unfair---to outsmart---to share or educate---to be gated off from the less fortunate---to befriend the less fortunate---to go gently down God's evolutionary process and commune with Mother nature---to mindlessly deplete natural resources and overpopulate the earth posed as a God given right---and so on it goes, one choice after another and the sum total of all these choices, packaged together, creates our own mental and collective heaven or hell.
Fortunately, our foes---like our friends---come and go for the most part. To the extent the better angels of our nature can dominate, the foes are fewer and last for shorter periods of time. Aside from any political issues I watch someone like Barack Obama and realize how so many personal barriers can be dissolved with the right mindset and disposition. I mean, what the hell did he really have going for him to ever achieve the kind of widespread support from so many diverse people? They say mutts make the best pets, and maybe human mutts make the best leaders. To whom does he belong based on genetics, culture, religion, region of his formative years, or any other typical measure? He is not 'one of us' to anyone and yet he has become an adopted 'one of us' to an astonishing cross section of groups. His opponents appear to be those whose 'group' identity is the core concept of their life. This is being written before the results of the election but still, win or lose, he has taught character assassins a needed lesson. I hope it sets precedent for future elections. You know, according to the sleazists, he really is a Muslim, or he pals around with terrorists, or whatever some minister says is his responsibility and has his endorsement, or addressing the needs of the less fortunate makes him a socialist, or progressive taxation makes him a redistributor of wealth (like spreading some of the wealth in this country held by 1% of the population is a bad thing), or his deliberative and thoughtful approach to matters makes him an elitist, or his appeal to diverse people reduces him to a mere 'rock star', or his background as a community organizer means he lacks the experience necessary to be a national leader, and of course he has never been in a position to ever really run anything--- notwithstanding running a national campaign the likes of which have never been achieved before. And as one lady told a friend of mine, "My God, who would have ever thought there would be a time when pick-a-ninnies could be running loose in the White House". Ahah! That might be the ace in the hole which might stick---as I said, this is written before the election. It just seems if George Bush can occupy the White House and even get re-elected to occupy it for 8 years, the eligibility standards have no bottom. Has any President ever managed to become so irrelevant to so many rulers and people across the globe? Is there anyone anywhere anytime on any matter who still listens to George Bush on anything? Is the damage he has done, at home and abroad, reparable? Let us all cross our fingers. Dan Quayle and that aged retired military guy who was Ross Perot's Vice Presidential candidate ("Why am I here" was his opening remark in his debate) never got to drag us to the shallow end of the gene pool. Maybe Sarah Palin will. Just when you think no one could ever underperform George Bush, along comes Sarah Palin. Golly Gee, Aw Shucks, Howdeeeee! Wink, wink. Wouldn't the intellectual founding fathers be proud of her! Outside of George Bush I didn't think there was another person in politics who could not name any newspaper or magazine or book they had ever read recently. I guess when God speaks directly to you and you are motivated by 'gut' feelings, there is no need for any other input.
