Ideal & real are separated by light years of difference. To think otherwise is wishful, or magical, thinking. I know this best since it was formerly my position to be fixed and immutable, but then not even God, or what we consider the absolute highest power, is such.
To have and to hold, to lay up or lose, are issues inevitably decided by the value and meaning of life it self. And for me the issue is decided towards the truth of free will and choice, won at the cost of many lives sacrificed to keep this possible in real time.
As we close on Memorial Day, in America, the day is experienced differently by those who seek a holiday from the normal grind of keeping alive by labor. For me today is extraordinary, the birthday of two very special people no longer with us. My son and a man who was a surrogate father to me. Their lives and deaths have altered mine by intersection or coincidence? I don’t think so.
Nor do I think it an inconvenient truth that we live, essentially free, because of the efforts of those who remain or are departed in efforts to nurture our right and privilege to vote or not. My thinking and feelings have been fundamentally and irrevocably altered by recent events. Cause and effect, birth implies death, both should be celebrated equally yet death in and of itself is avoided at all costs in the ordinary of our time.
I received notification that I was in jeopardy of being evicted from my HUD augmented rental apartment for issues of cleanliness. Despite my maturity, wisdom and experience I went through the “why me--why not me--this is a pain in the sit down” and then dealt with the issue; procrastination is the theft of time. The result is a forced integration between my ideal and real life manifest in spades.
I have an articulated sense of the ideal person, Jesus, as being perfectly balanced between male and female, equal in definition: thinking, feeling, sensing and intuition. Thus He is not some vague object or subject of idle speculation to me. Though I fall flat on my face attempting to emulate His ideal I always get back up and continue the struggle and will continue to do so until I can no longer get up in death.
My point is that within the chaos of current reality we must work towards tolerance, understanding and the possibility of Love not Vengeance. Since we are all equal in the eyes of What Jesus spoke about, but not exclusively of His definition or time 2,000 years ago--as citizens of the world we must seek what give life equally to all of us.
"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
. . . an afterthought or two: Political debate has devolved into argument thus become a lunatic asylum for idealistic rhetoric while our children are now sacrificed for the profit of both the politicians and those who fund their campaigning that they remain in profitable power together. Seek Truth Always be sure of your resources:
http://www.brainpickings.org/ today: . . . excerpt from BBC’s 1959 Face to Face interview
"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral.
The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.
The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
--Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
