Sorry I didn’t write yesterday. I left the house yesterday, that will make things easier. For the first time I did what I consider my default Sunday plan, going to An Beal Bocht for their traditional Irish session. The easiest way to get there is walking but it’s a long walk, half an hour. I didn’t realize how hot and humid it was and did not dress optimally. I needed one of my high-performance wicking shirts. The feels like temperature was 95°F. When I got there the doors were open and it wasn’t air-conditioned. I decided I wouldn’t stay too long. Then three things happened, it cooled down, I got into the music, and it started pouring. No way I was going to go out into that deluge. Good thing the music was great. There were even a few people dancing. It was a real session. The waitress didn’t pressure me to order, all I had was a diet coke. It was about sitting and enjoying the music. It was all instrumentals. I couldn’t tell you what was played and knew none of the players but had a great time.
After an hour and a half I had enough, the rain had stopped, and I had to go grocery shopping. I walked to Aldi, which is not that far away. There was a sprinkle of rain but it felt good. This was classic summer weather. All that hot humid air leads to a thunderstorm which cools things down.
I made a shopping list on my phone but I’ve been working on my memory skills; memorizing my list by visualizing where I will put things when I get home. Let’s see how I can do the next day. Ice cream in the freezer, butter in the refrigerator door, sliced ham in the refrigerator breakfast bin, and snacks where I can get them quickly. I looked at my list and missed one. Peanut butter which also goes in the fridge door. I took the bus home and discovered that on the weekend the bus leaves me closer to my home than on weekdays. I walked 4.55 miles so I’m OK with that. Today will be tough. I want to get bagels but it’s supposed to rain in the afternoon, when I plan on leaving. That’s why Noah invented the umbrella.
As I was getting ready to leave the house yesterday I heard a woman giving a profanity laced tirade. I thought it was my neighbor, it wasn’t. She, a young man, and a boy of about 10 were in the entrance courtyard of the building, directly under my window. I couldn’t help but here some of what was going on and it started a complex chain of thoughts. At first I was upset with the woman for speaking like that in front of her child. I felt bad for the man, perhaps the boy’s father, she was yelling at. When I paid more attention to her tone I realized that there was caring in her anger. She cared about the what the man was doing to himself and to her and her son. I don’t know any details but she threatened to call and violate him. I suspect that means he’s out on parole.
I started with making a judgement about the mother but there’s so much going on. She’s under stress I can’t imagine. The young man on parole is under stress I can’t imagine. The boy is spending his formative year living with this stress. There’s a good chance that one or both the adults did too. That’s the cycle of poverty. The tsking class has always blamed it on the choices being made but are blind to the fact that they never had to make these choices under these conditions. We should all take Vonnegut’s words to heart; “I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.” That includes the people in the tsking class. It includes the people that reject the notion that people can be victims of their environment. They too are victims of theirs. Environment is not destiny, but it’s a makes a large distance.
Think about Nazi Germany. Were 70,000,000 people irredeemably evil? I find that difficult to believe They vast majority didn’t act evil after the war? What happened was a culture that amplified the worst in people and stifled the best. We are neither angels nor demons, we are people that are continually changing.
Many look at those in America that are showing their worst, and think them irredeemable. We know that people are complex, that people can change. There are countless examples. Look how much people’s attitudes towards same-sex marriage has changed the last 20 years. People are far less homophobic. It doesn’t mean that there’s no problem. Of course there are still people acting on their homophobia, but there is less of it. People were redeemed.
I’m a child of the 60s. The values of peace, love, and understanding are embedded in my firmware. It’s hard to believe that I was only 10 when Martin Luther King died. He was already a hero of mine. What I loved about him above all was his commitment to non-violence. He resisted the evils of racism, but he resisted non-violently. So few believe that to their bones. From King my admiration spread to Gandhi. He freed a nation without using violence. There was more power in him making salt than in all the terrorist attacks the world has seen.
That’s how we resist without becoming what we are fighting. Once we see it as Us, the good guys, versus, Them, the bad guys, how do we differ except on which side we are on? There is only Us, humanity, with good and evil mixed in all of us. That includes me. I can’t always live up to my ideals. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.
Wise Madness 