Friday, August 31, 2012

Veiw Beyond the Chasm


Okay, so here is my take on the whole political thing.  Some of my friends who read this will be surprised and quite possibly disappointed in me.  Be that as it may, I am sticking my two cents out there into the political fringe.

I do not adamantly follow politics.  It is not that I am ignorant or that I want to become ignorant.  It is that I have a full intellect at present.  I am a researcher by trade, so with anything that I look at I am compelled to research back to the source.  And because so much of what we are presented with on our media front is biased by whoever contributes the most bucks, I am unable to go with the majority of what is presented unless I tirelessly research, and at present, I do not have the time.  I am busy delving into the psychology behind leadership, because I believe that what makes the best or worst type of leader is that which compels him or her.  I go to my husband, my friend, Bodie, and my Uncle Allen when I want input, because they DO dig.

I am neither left nor right.  Having spent years swinging on the chandelier betwixt depression and mania, I’ve an aversion to extremes, and I do not believe that either has all the answers.  In fact I do not believe humans are EVER equipped with all the answers, and those who purport that they do have all the answers are in danger of falling into stupidity.  Strong words?  My apologies.  I am not angry, just tired of the finite human mind expecting to know it all.  Because there is a difference between searching for them and positing that one has them.  

I do not often share my ideologies about hot topics, not because I don’t have them, but because it seems a pointless waste of time to holler across a chasm of entrenchment to those who are on the other side that they are wrong when I am not certain that my definition of "right" is the same as theirs.  What I am certain of is that what I think is most often what I believe, and I have tested and tried my ideologies so that they fulfill the standards that I have.  But however firmly I am seated in my beliefs, it would be sheer arrogance to assume that the party on the other side is not as firmly seated in theirs and has arrived at such from a series of life experiences that have led to conclusions just as mine have.  So, I do not argue beliefs, which includes politics.  But I am ever fighting to remain both open and objective in what comes my way.  

I come from a conservative state and a conservative familial background.  And I do not believe that being conservative is necessarily mutually exclusive with being a Republican.  I believe that when we define one thing as indicative of another, we run the risk of putting on a thin layer of ignorance that can build up if we are not continually questioning.  I am in a very liberal field, psychology, and I have learned much from my peers and mentors over the years who did not share my conservative views.  The beauty of it all was not that I changed their minds or they mine, but it was the process.  It was like being given a bag of items that I could take home and look at to discover their value in my life.  What fit I kept and what did not, I threw out, but that particular process was never contingent on their being present.  It was and is something I do internally in the presence of my maker.  

My Uncle sometimes gives me the best fodder for thought…He has no idea.  He mentioned something about another blog and the classifications human being make…that it makes us feel safer.  That has been reverberating throughout my mind today as I wrapped up the last tidbits for my chapter one of my dissertation.  It rattled around so much that the noise forced me to stop and ponder.  Why do we do that, categorize, that is?  I keep going back to the finite…Our need to pound things down to a way or method by which we can process.  Is that good?  Bad?  I can’t assess that, but I will posit that much of our need to do that links with feeling safe in the sense that we need order.  When I am stressed, the first thing I do is clean my house.  When I have a paper to write, the first thing I do is pound the data down into an outline.  I have 280 articles I could potentially use in my dissertation, and because my chair pleaded with me not to use all of them, I have avoided the overwhelming deluge of data by pounding it down into categories that are relevant.  And those are just my examples.  What do you categorize?  

My point?  Well, my point is that, for me, answers are never as simple as we would like them to be, and sometimes it seems to me expedience wins over true thought to take on rhetoric that SEEMS to sum it all up in a quick fix that assuages our fears, but the bottom line, at least from my certainly biased perspective is that there is no such simplification to the human condition.  And often that rhetoric is only accepted because we are too tired or too busy to really sit down and sort through everything to get down to the source…and the money maker.

Please do not misinterpret me here.  I am not lethargic.  Actually, I am Nemesis, my wrath at injustice rolling downhill towards whoever is at the bottom.  I know this about myself.  I know that the combination of intellect, decisiveness, and wrath are lethal, and just as Peter in the Bible, I am capable of impulsively cutting off the ear of my adversary when that may only make things worse.  I have been learning in the past forty years how to look at all sides, how to step back, and how to be empathetic.   The one thing I learned in the wars I have fought is that I am much better as a person when I love.  My nature is to rise up and vanquish, but I have learned to allow my heart to rise up and love instead.  That means, most of the time, that I am unable to commit definitive answers to big questions.  I just don’t have enough data, and as people are usually involved, I have to consider whether they need my assessment or my love.  Mostly though, I am looking to be wiser, and what I have learned about wisdom is that it observes and is slow to verbalize.  I am working that direction…

I have chosen the areas in my life I fight for.  I am one woman who is socially inept, personally depleted too quickly, and broken in ways that will never mend.  I fight for my family, because above they are the jewels in my crown.  My love for them compounds daily.  I fight for the mentally ill, because they need articulation, and I am one of them able to straddle the upper echelon of the intellectual world and still have both feet involuntarily planted in the daily messiness which affords me a voice and a perspective. 

Right now, though, I am really focusing on helping my twelve year old grow into the kind of man who thinks before he acts, is a man of integrity, and most importantly, a boy who gets through 7th grade with his self-esteem intact while knowing no matter what path he chooses he is beloved by his earthly parents and his Abba.  My plate is full.

Blessings,
L

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