For those who are curious, the title of today’s entry comes from one of my favorite songs (and one of the songs I find most applicable to my own life and struggles) a song called “Living Darfur” by Mattaflix [1]. I find it striking and notable that the personal and the political should often be so closely related. Our own political worldviews, and our attitudes toward authority, are profoundly shaped by our personal experiences. Specifically, we often react in the contrary direction to the extremes that we have suffered in our lives. If we suffer abuses of authority, we are prone to desire little or no authority at all (libertarian bias), whereas if we suffer from anarchy and an absence of authority, we are prone to find safety in powerful central governments (authoritarian bias). Seldom do we stop at the middle, at a healthy balance between one extreme and another, except as we are passing to the opposite extreme.

All too often in life we spend so little time responding and living, and so much time reacting. We do not respond so much to others, but rather react based on our own fears and past experiences, and sometimes we are trapped in the scripts of our own writing, unable to see any roles for ourselves and others beyond the familiar victim and villain tales. And, truth be told, all of us are more complicated than simple victims and villains, as we are all both sinned against and sinning, often in the same relationships in different ways. When we recognize the possibilities that exist beyond the same old tired retread scripts, we are free to experience happiness and joy, and practice patience and trust with others in ways that are often unfamiliar to those of us whose lives have led us to be suspicious and to think of life as something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

The choice between living and mere existing lies with each of us and each of us alone. We can and should find encouragement along the way from others, but the doom of choice is with ourselves alone. Over six years ago, as I reflected gloomily on the death of my father at the age of 59 due to a heart attack that followed a stroke by about six weeks, I pondered the lessons of his death for me. In a sense, I believe that my father died because he never learned how to openly and honestly wrestle with his heart. His feelings, though deep, were seldom expressed, and never openly. They had to be understood implicitly and intuitively, and few people had the patience to even try to understand my father’s deep loyalty and uncommon decency beneath the fierce sarcasm of my father’s communication, even without having to take personal history into consideration.

As is so often the case, the apple does not fall far from the tree. When my father died, I knew that my own life would neither be long nor happy, nor would I fulfill my deepest longings for love and intimacy, unless I wrestled more successfully with my own heart than my father had done with his. Though I have certainly wrestled more openly with it than he did, I still feel as if I have barely begun to show others the love and respect I feel for them, and barely begun to communicate in ways that build harmony and peace rather than cut and wound as comes naturally. But I suppose as is often the case that the hard work and labor is at the beginning and the fruits take time to ripen before the harvest can be enjoyed.

As I struggle with these problems personally, it is not hard to see at the same time that these problems exist in all parts of our world. Everywhere one sees the same tired rehashed scripts repeated over and over and over again. People assume that because they are fearful and insecure that others must be monsters devoid of any human love and compassion or goodness, and they assume that others insult and abuse them out of hatred, when it is usually out of fear and paranoia. And because we so often insulate ourselves from others, we do not see the humanity in our adversaries, nor do they see the humanity in us. Wounded, we wound others as we know how to do best, and no one stops to bind up the wounded or to show and demonstrate better ways of living and communicating, as we are too busy shooting and yelling at each other to lay the weapons down for even a moment.

At this point in my life, I know what I want to do and how I want to live and communicate, I just don’t know how to do it (well). But practice will make things easier and more successful, and I simply have to keep trying and keep working at it. None of us can make anyone else do what is right–it is hard enough to do our job and to take care of ourselves and our own thoughts and words and actions. And no one else can do our job for us. So much remains to be done–both in ourselves and in our world–and so much remains to be begun. It is that way with so much. Let us at least do what we can. If we want to make this world a better place, we must start from the inside and work our way out. That should be enough work to keep us busy for all the time that heaven allows us on this earth.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/living-darfur/