I spoke with an old friend yesterday, whose wife walked out on him the other day after 30 years of marriage. She found somebody else. They're getting a divorce. He's left to pick up his life. I hardly knew what to say to him, except to offer my prayers. I love the guy, and can't imagine his pain.
I was telling my wife about this last night after she got back from shopping, and she told me she'd run into a neighbor who's being put through the wringer with her teenager's chronic medical and psychological condition, the details of which I'll spare you out of concern for her privacy. But if you drove by those people's nice little house every day, you could hardly imagine the suffering going on behind those walls.
We've got a couple of situations in our own family, certainly not nearly as bad as that poor soul's, but a thing that nevertheless wears us out, Julie and me. Seems like most people we know are struggling with one or more serious crosses. It makes you think hard about that saying you often hear quoted: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."
I love reading and writing polemics, and engaging in public discussion and debate. But I find that more and more, I compartmentalize. I argue and debate because it's important to engage on issues critical to the direction of our politics and culture, and in some sense it's pleasurable. Yet I'm finding that I'm coming to the age in which the idea of going to the party and being nice to everybody is sounding more and more appealing. Life is hard, and long. I used to know a political journalist who, in a discussion about arguing and sociability, said something that has come to strike me as profound: "You get to an age when you just want to go to the party and be nice to everybody."
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Rawlins, yes and yes. Wise ones realize the foolishness of burning bridges - 'tis much better to have a deep Rolodex in business and personal relationships, especially when tough times hit.
I think that's why the painfully humiliated Eliot seemed to have no friends in the end in spite of his many opportunities to court them in his professional career. He unwisely placed no value in human beings.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased—thus do we refute entropy."
-- Spider Robinson
As happens on occasion, I receive praise for my civility, both online and in person. I have secret to share, a confession to make: I am no more "civil" than anyone else.
What I do have is a personal, intimate understanding of Spider's axiom. If experience is the best teacher, if pain teaches the most enduring lessons, there is only one thing we need to do: share the joy that we feel when we find ourselves on the other side of the learning point.
The only variable, especially in this upside-down society we call cyberspace, is to make the simple effort to understand and respect the level of sharing each person chooses to bring. The trust we receive must be earned, the trust we give must be learned.
"Why don't you ask yourself this the next time you call a woman you've never met and don't know except through a New York Times Style section article a "slut." In a loving way, of course."
Boy, Rod, this crowd is NEVER going to let you live that down. I have images of some CC reader serving time for child-murder thinking to himself, "Well, at least I never called anyone a SLUT."
Rod,You and Mdavid are opposite sides of the same distorted view...but that doesn't mean one should be merciless in applying [standards].
My view of marriage is merely that of the Church. Please show me how this position is "distorted" or "merciless". Seriously, I'm all ears.
Unless you are saying I'm somehow personally merciless (exact quote, please). But until you have something tangible, your accusations are merely a straw man attack on me...one that coincidentally makes your position seem oh-so moderate. Nice work when you can get it.
Lord knows mdavid and I are not allies, and are in fact only tangentially on speaking terms. (And btw, I note he's changed the spelling of his name, post-Lent. I wonder if that's an austerity measure--a mortification of the virtual flesh of his avatar by depriving it of the underscore.) However, I must point out that he does seem to have the whip hand of Rod and other apologists here.
My view of marriage is merely that of the Church. Indeed. This seems, as far as I can tell, to be accurate. Rod can't call it "distorted" or "merciless." But I can, and do. : ) The official Church, being obsessed with PR, has a need to make their position seem all nicey-nice, without mitigating a jot of its essential distortion and mercilessness. Mdavid provides a service by just putting it out there, stripped of its doilies and ribbons.
(Tangentially, I wonder if he thinks annulment is okay. I believe he has to, since the Pope and bishops have seen fit to allow it. But I would guess he thinks it's being misused by those gosh-darn liberals. Just a guess, of course. Perhaps he'll see fit to blowtorch my idle speculations with the white-hot flame of his Truth.)
I hope, for my own selfish reasons, that he'll bulldog the argument. Tell Rod off, point out his errors, sneer a bit more. It would be so much fun to see him put out on the step with those who shall remain nameless. Yummy! I can taste the popcorn already.
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