Dear Ray, We just spent five hours together. You were kind enough to host us for a Fourth of July potluck around your fire pit, our teenage kids mingling, running, and laughing while shooting off rockets and smoke bombs, before separating back to their neutral phone corners. Our kids grew up together, we’ve done countless school fundraisers and gatherings, we’ve battled dumb policies at large gymnasium rallies, I the insider teacher, you the freaky sculptor, cabinet maker, stay-at-home dad, wife a marketing executive, and we always ending up together, schmoozing about our dreams and the other square parents.
This is sad. Two “friends” whose relationship has frayed apart. Why? Because neither is willing or able to fully validate the other’s life experience, the experience that forms the basis of each person’s world view? At one time, did your experiences run parallel and thus your world views? If so, likewise did your experiences diverge so drastically that it has now become too difficult to embrace those differences? The gap too wide to bridge?
Politics aside, what is going on here on the most basic level? Want for Compassion, the ability to bear the suffering of another as if it were one’s own?
Letter to a leftist friend
This is sad. Two “friends” whose relationship has frayed apart. Why? Because neither is willing or able to fully validate the other’s life experience, the experience that forms the basis of each person’s world view? At one time, did your experiences run parallel and thus your world views? If so, likewise did your experiences diverge so drastically that it has now become too difficult to embrace those differences? The gap too wide to bridge?
Politics aside, what is going on here on the most basic level? Want for Compassion, the ability to bear the suffering of another as if it were one’s own?
So many questions…