I Am What I Am

I guess we all see ourselves differently than others see us. And versa vice.

It's funny really in a way, but it has made me keenly aware of the dark powers in this world and of one of their most ingenious devices: the ability to divide us, to make us focus on our differences, to fracture our Platonic love for one another and send us spinning down into a whirlpool of strife and mistrust. And at the bottom of that pool, there is nothing but drowned and decaying bodies.

You see, my closest friends believe I am a conservative type, casual acquaintances believe me to be a liberal type, and strangers often think I am simply insane (I think they may have the inside track on the truth here, but if I am insane, then I'm probably not right, am I?). Truth be told, I do hold with some "conservative" ideas, then again, I have plenty of "liberal" beliefs as well. So what does that make me? Let me answer by saying: "What does it matter?"

Too often today (as in the past), people wish to boil others down into nice, easy catagories. Conservative, liberal, good, bad, hippie, square, pretty, ugly, skinny, fat, black, white, Jew, Gentile, Believer, Infidel...what have you. That kind of thinking has led to some of the worst atrocities in human history (slavery, the Holocaust, Islamic Jihad, The War on Terror, etc.) Still, it's completely understandable, if not justifiable, for that is how the human brain likes to work, by categorizing and filing items of data away in nice little piles--it makes things easier for us by creating well traveled chemical pathways in our brain, like synaptic interstates for ideas and memories. But then again, who said life should be easy? Only fools. The rest of us know that the opposite is true; living in the real world is freakin' HARD.

So even though I am guilty of these type of generalizations about people from time to time, I try hard to keep a truly open mind about them. Now most people love to say about themselves, with a great surge of (unhealthy) pride: "I have an open mind!" But when it comes right down to it, when they make up their mind about someone, that they are good or bad, conservative or liberal, etc., their mind slams the door shut on any possibilities for that person to change (in their eyes), or to be anything other than what they've already decided they must be. But how do we really know? It's hard enough to "know thyself," let alone know anyone better than we do ourselves. Can any of you see into another's heart? I thought that was God's providence alone. Still, I am open to the possibility that I may be mistaken.

So when I say I try to keep an open mind about people, I mean it in the broadest possible sense. I try to keep my mind open to people, as they are today, as they behave, as they act out their character in their lives and interactions with others, so I can know them better, not to judge them (difficult), and not to file them away neatly in one of the labeled storage bins in my mind (very difficult). But to appreciate the wholeness, fullness and intrinsic value of that person, (no matter how they behave) because I realize now that it is only great pride that allows us to tell ourselves: "He's just a bleeding heart liberal!" or "She's an ignorant, heartless conservative!" And it is only with a truly open mind and open heart that I am able to sleep at night.

So, tell me, how many of you out there, right now, are thinking: "this guy's a hippie" or "he's a bleeding heart" or "he's nuts"??????

You may be right.

But I am what I am.

And you have no idea.