"Being political" is getting what we want
and avoiding what we don't want.
Everyone has their own idea
of how things ought to be.
"Politics" is where we strive
to have our idea implemented
and to prevent not-out-idea
from being forced on us.
"Politics" is the battle field
for having what we want
the way we want it
without actually going to war
and killing each other
over our preferences.
Although people still die
over how things are done
and not done.
Slavery and the genocide
of indigenous Americans
attest to that.
Why can't we just live together
in ways we all can tolerate?
Why can't we all just like
the same things?
Why do some of us have to hate
others of us?
Why does intolerance
have such a hold on us?
Such power over us?
Where and how do we draw the line?
–0–
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 
So many conundrums life presents to me. I began to follow a minister’s Substack column because I felt aligned with the love he presented in some of his columns but then in a comment section separate from his columns I noticed he went on rant against Biden and liberals. The contrast was stark and jolting. Now, I feel like I’ve walked into an internal minefield in my own thoughts. It causes me to pause and ask myself if I can even trust my assessments of people, life, love? This minefield presents a challenge to my understanding of how I perceive things in my thoughts and evaluations.
I am going to be puzzling over this for a long time, I think. It was such a jolt and tore a hole in my thinking. Sorry – probably TMI – but it felt relevant to your post somehow.
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Doesn’t this take us to the heart of how things are, though? Your paragraph is a beautiful/wonderful description of the horror of the contradictory truth of existence! This is the pure representation of the duality at the heart of reality: On the one hand this, and on the other hand, that. And THAT is how things are! And we have to embrace the madness of oneness that takes those incompatible polarities into account in bearing in our own body the marks of the cross with its vertical and horizontal opposites tearing us apart. How do we bear it?r How do we stand it? Knowing that the opposition is not only in other people who we took to be one way and then see to be another way, but also in ourselves, and how we have to wrestle with our own incompatibilities all the way–which IS the way! Knowing that WE are the one! Bearing our own opposites within. This is the old Zen/Taoist/Buddhist/Hindu recognition of Neti-Neti and Thou Art That, and This too, this too. Bearing the truth of our own duality, and that of each other, in our awareness is bearing the pain of life, of how it is with us, and letting it be because it is. This is the grounding foundation of Koans and Conundrums. We are it! It is I! And we know that about ourselves and about one another, and wink, smile and laugh and live on, live on, all along the way that is The Way. Because the way out is the way through, and “The shortest way through is the long way around.” It is the dance of life, of existence, borne by those who see, hear, understand and know how it is and live on, anyway, nevertheless, even so because that is how it is, and living on in the company of one another is what we do–Knowingly doing what needs to be done in the company of those who are knowingly doing what must be done because to not do it is to refuse the call of life which is to courageously be who we are, where we are, when we are, how we are anyway, nevertheless, even so dancing, laughing together on and on celebrating the fact that we are doing what needs to be done the way it needs to be done forever. The Hero’s Journey! This makes two of us who know and do–and if there are two of us, there are also more of us, winking at one another across the room, saying YES to life just as it is all the way! IS the way!
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When the minister you refer to recognizes his own contradictions and bears the pain of the conflict between compassion and seething hatred and takes the side of compassion with the full agony that entails/requires, then he can be one with all who wrestle with our own contradictions and come out on the side of compassion, bearing the pain that requires. Always the tension of opposites–but we act in the way compassion dictates even though we may remain of mixed motives in the matter, we live compassionately nonetheless.
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Your words capture exactly the conundrum I feel I am facing. For once, I had a stark representation of duality thinking and now have to sit in the middle of anxiety about whether/how to deal with it.
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Many, many thanks! 🪷🪷🪷
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