Since I was fifteen in 1968—a controversy-rich time in our history—I was locked and loaded with my opinions about Vietnam, racism, farm workers, unions, and in the next two years, gender issues and the environment. In the ones and zeroes of my cerebral RAM, I catalogued my arguments with supporting quotes, historical footnotes, endless examples, and rhetorical aikido moves, ready for battle. That lasted into the eighties, and I apologize to all those I subjected to my diatribes, stubbornness, and absolutist statements.
I think a point came where I ran out of steam. I continued to hold strong opinions but didn’t feel the need to expound them at every opportunity like a jack-in-the-box.
As I began writing more, I found a new vehicle for expressing my positions, less loud perhaps, maybe more measured, but still certain and no less vociferous.
Later, social media offered a venue to opine all day and night, and I leaned in, with particularly vitriolic statements following the US presidential election of 2016. I had company-Facebook was awash in blame, accusation, anger, and ad hominem assaults.
As I reflected and looked at my emotions and motivations and how I felt when I took hardened positions, I had to realize that I was not making things better. I wasn’t changing minds or winning converts. I wasn’t expanding understanding or shining light on the truth.
What I was doing was opening an emotional pressure relief valve. Holding the reality of war, oppression, homophobia, genocide, racism, environmental destruction, and misogyny is uncomfortable. It’s painful. In my immaturity, I couldn’t hold it, and chose instead to try to contain the uncertainty, fear, and despair I felt within rigid thoughts and opinions and occasional angry outbursts. I couldn’t face the thought I might be making things worse.
In the spring of 1972, Nixon mined Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam. We blockaded all the roads into Washington State University and did a lot of shouting. At the time it felt righteous. Decades later I look back and must admit we did not stop the war, we kept working folks from getting to their university jobs, and we displayed something more like a tantrum than an effective political protest.
As citizens and humans, we do experience the suffering of the world, and I am called on for some appropriate response. But this world is infinitely complex, and things are not as simple as I once thought. What is true? How would I know? Bernie Glassman playfully renamed the “Four Noble Opinions”, making a point about our clinging to certainty.
I’ve written and published here with some regularity until recently. Lately I’ve found I have nothing to say. Perhaps, after decades of zazen, I’ve finally grown weary of the sound of my hamster wheel. Or maybe the warp and weft of history, cause and effect, human motivations, and the fragility of subjective perspectives produce a fabric that is gossamer thin and prone to tearing.
But now, as I look back at five hundred words, I suppose I did have something to say.
Thank you for listening.
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