Complexities

I'm trying to see complexly.

Not simply.
Not in stark black and white
that limits my comprehension
and robs me of nuance and shades and  subtleties
of being alive.

Complexity is challenging
when nearly all humans are subconsciously/consciously
trained
to live in a
black and white world.

Black and white.

Us vs them.
Him vs her.
Rich vs poor.
Native born vs immigrant.
Our skin color vs their skin color.
My beliefs vs your beliefs.
Good vs evil.

Everything that is me
vs
everything that is you.

Our symmetrical bodies
and bi-hemispheric brains
demand to see things
in pairs of opposites.

Our great challenge is not to abandon
our terrible visceral connection
to living, breathing, thinking, loving, understanding
in cemented pairs of this or that.

Our great challenge is to embrace what we are,
and to rise above it.

Within every thing, every situation that seems determined to divide us
is common ground.

That common ground IS the complexity.
That common ground IS the nuance, shade and subtlety.

I am convinced that if we can only find that common ground--
that shared foundation of need and feeling and simply being alive--
then
only then
will we metamorphose
from being merely human
to being a part of humanity.

CHM

Not About Trump

I guess I'm one of those snowflakes you are hearing so much about.

You know, one of those bleeding-heart, earth-loving, eco-minded, diversity-embracing, open-minded, critical-thinker liberal snowflakes.

And I'm trying hard not to melt in the blazing fires of hate, fear and intolerance that are sweeping through my country.

But who am I kidding?  These fires have always burned--here and everywhere.  Sometimes the fires are banked down, ignorable.  Sometimes kindling is thrown on them and they sweep back up, towering and frightening.

But they've always burned.

And as I considered this human ebb and flow of hatred, fear and intolerance, I realized something.

My fear, anguish and anger are not about President Trump.

President Trump is a convenient stand-in.  A scapegoat even.

He only seems to be the catalyst for what is happening now in the United States because he had the bluster and money to construct the facade.  He spent his life constructing a larger-than-life costume inside which he hid.  And hides.

Who is he really?  What is he really?

He's small.  Truth be told, on the grand cosmic scale we're all very, very small.

He's got determination without consideration.

He's got decisiveness without insight.

He is a man lacking nuance and critical thought.

He's a self-created caricature of success that has become so monolithic that  millions of Americans can no longer see that he's a caricature at all.  Pixar and Dreamworks combined couldn't have created a more believable animation.

And  he is in way over his head.  I believe there was a point during the presidential campaign when he realized this.  When he realized that maybe he couldn't do and  didn't want this job of President.

That maybe, just maybe, he had made a mistake and is only now appreciating the price.


But as he has always done, he thundered  his way through, hiding any doubts he had behind outrageous accusations and impossible declarations of promises he could never keep.

His business model turned political.

And now?

Now this small man is standing on a tower made of other small people--his advisors, his cabinet, his children, his wife, his supporters.

Like Dr. Seuss' Yertle lording over all he sees atop a swaying pile of his turtle minions, President Trump is a man who has fooled himself into believing that he is the one who will decide if and when he falls.

He doesn't realize that it is not up to him at all.

And I pity him.

And in my pity for President Donald Trump, I have found the real source of my fear, anguish and anger:

my fellow Americans.

It is a strange, heartbreaking and nuanced realization to make.  But it is a realization with which I must grapple.

My fellow Americans--people who could easily be friends, family, colleagues, mentors, that Starbucks barista, this nurse taking my pulse--these people are the ones who decided that Donald Trump was the leader we needed.

My fellow Americans are the turtles at the very  bottom of the tower atop which sways and boasts this President Trump.   They rely upon their hard shells of desperate belief to protect their tender hearts and minds from being crushed.

And as small as Donald Trump is--just a human, just a man who was able to convince himself that he was more than the sum of his parts--could it be that we are all just as small?

That those Americans who supported him are also small and deserving of consideration and sympathy?

And if I feel consideration and  sympathy for the vast number of fellow Americans who support President Trump, what do I then do with my own fear, anguish and anger? How do I look towards an immediate and long-term future--for myself, those I love, my country--in which all I see is a cold and foggy gray unknown?

I fall back on  what I believe in.

I fall back on myself.

On being a snowflake.

Of course, my one snowflake might  easily melt in this fire.

But enough snowflakes together might turn into a storm.

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.” 

― Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore