Tolerance

I am tired of causes. Not that there aren't good ones, even great ones out there, but being true to a cause seems to narrow the focus of some people so much that everything else pales beside it. I'm not a big believer in absolutes, they are pretty volatile and unstable things in my opinion. My father once told me that we have the extremists on both ends so most of us can meet in the middle somewhere. That is the best reason I can think of for having them.

I find life moves right along whether I believe in it, or not. I don't really believe in war. I think it just forces the loser underground until another time when there will be another war, but I also know that if you held a gun to the head of one of my children, I would do whatever it took to annihilate you first. So much for being a pacifist. I hope I'm never put in that position.

The way I think the world would be best and the things I am actually willing and able to do are separated by huge swaths of reality.

In general I have discovered that most people really aren't as different from me as I might like to think. When it comes down to the real nitty gritty, we love our families and communities and do things because we find a good in them that satisfies some primal part of us enough to justify the blood, sweat and tears they cause. With a very few exceptions, most people could stand a little more tolerance. It's not until I spend some time with a person, work side by side with them, eat with them and get to know their children that I really know who they are. Then I am often surprised at how much we have in common.

I am also sometimes surprised to discover that the best thing we can do is give each other enough space so our paths don't cross too often, but even that is not a bad thing, because, except for some of those people who hang out on the distant fringes, there needs to be room for everyone.

The exceptions are the reason someone invented shears and someone else invented a honing stone. There are not enough degrees of separation to merit hate based ideologies on either end.