I called a longtime friend of mine one Sunday morning. It was about 10 a.m. He was still having breakfast and used that as the reason to end our conversation. I was put off. In retrospect, I believe that he is a second-shift person, so breakfast at 10 a.m. would be normal for that shift, but it took me a week to get over the fact that he didn't want to continue our conversation.
The lesson here, I have learned, is perspective. We all want everyone else to understand things from our perspective, yet we never give them that, the perspective. We assume that "they should know." I am guilty, probably more guilty than most of that flaw.
To that man, I offer my apologies for that misunderstanding. I also raise a challenge. One of the things he said to me was that he was "tired of people using the world liberal as if it was some kind of swear word." To that I must also say, "I am guilty." I have a solution, if anyone is willing to participate.
Has it occurred to anyone other than myself, that we are all fighting against each other based on what some fool of the media has said? Or what some foolishly constructed organization or another has said? I have to say rarely does anyone or any organization say what I think exactly. Never has any media representative or organization said anything that made complete sense to me, not even the so-called "conservative" ones.
I have an idea. It's an old idea, older than is this country, though the one on which it was founded. I'm willing to start meetings for us to talk about what we want and what we believe, perhaps I got those two in reverse order. If we continue to fight each other over what some published fool has to say, nothing will ever change.
To my friend, you are still my friend. I am dismayed at your tone and attitude when we talked. I didn't know I had harmed you. Words are important. We must know the words we use when we use words we have incorrectly assumed the meaning of, we will cause harm we never intended.
Let's all know the meaning of the words we use and let's all speak to each other.
Our goals are not very different, our approach to the solution is not that far apart. The problem is that this government no longer represents any of us. Let's start talking and telling the elected representatives how to vote and what to think. At this point, they are telling us what we think, they and the media by their consent and our silence. Shoot! I had assumed that we had overthrown the king.
