Worlds Colliding
Writing is something I find very soothing to do. I was recently so upset about an incident involving gun laws and some people I know who are involved at the most sordid end of the gun manufacturing business, that I wrote a story denouncing the whole affair and sent it to a subgroup of related friends for consideration. The reaction I got back was difficult for me. I spent a moment wearing a hair shirt, as they say, and pouting that maybe I would just stop writing altogether. I think I have a fairly thick skin in many ways and one of those I feel is about my writing. It is something I do, but I consider myself a good storyteller and perhaps just a journeyman writer, so I try not to be offended by criticism of my writing. But writing is so much more than just syntax and punctuation. Writing is about communication, expression, thinking, reasoning, exploring and not least of all, feelings. I suspect that the bid/offer between my thinking of myself as being thick-skinned about my writing and others thinking I am defensive and hyper-sensitive is less about my writing and more about my expressed views. Perhaps I am far less impervious to criticism of my views, no matter how much I tout the importance of open-mindedness and tolerance.
Once again, I am inclined to parse that issue by suggesting that I am fully prepared to think that people think differently than me on certain topics, indeed that is inevitable and not at all infrequent. I guess what bothers me more is challenging my thought process and depth of consideration, into which I put very much of my soul and being. It’s much harder not to take those criticisms in stride even though it is valuable to try to do so. Pouting and putting down the pen with great fanfare seems not to be above me, but I am at least proud to say that I can fairly quickly recognize myself as being in that petulant and somewhat childish mode and call the self awareness artillery in on my own position. That is where I stand today on this whole gun-related issue. I did get my views off my chest and that makes the absolution easier, but mostly, I have quickly come to realize that I cannot punish myself effectively by stopping my writing. I am unclear what would happen to me is I squeezed off this very important world of expression that is now an active part of almost every day for me. I actually start feeling something is wrong if I do not write for a day or two and I feel better when I sit down and put something down on paper. I cannot give that up. If I was holistically at peace, I suppose I might be able to write without publishing, but that is the proverbial tree falling in an unoccupied forrest where no one can hear it. We know that scientists and great thinkers have pondered the intersecting realms of observation, perception and reality.
While Albert Einstein was alive (he died in 1955 at age 76), he and Neils Bohr (who died in 1962 at age 77) would ponder at great length the relative arguments and merits of observation, perception and reality in their quest to perfect their theories of quantum physics. Einstein became the scientific outlier, not a position that seemed to concern him so very much since he was often treading new ground, and challenged the thought that if no one looked at the moon, it might not exist. The majority of the quantum physics world, including his good pal Bohr, felt that existence in the absence of observation is at best conjecture. However, that is a conclusion that can neither be proven nor disproven, so both men went to their graves not satisfyingly proving either perspective.
Reality is a difficult subject to discuss for any of us. Ben Stiller may have said it best in his 1994 movie, Reality Bites. My reality and your reality can be quite different things. The concept that truth is in the eye of the beholder is just another take on the musings of Plato, who said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But beauty and reality are very different concepts. Beauty is a subjective notion and is literally driven by perception. But reality is quite different. Objective reality is something that absolutely does exist and is quite finite. But still, there is the added fact that reality is being reinterpreted through things like our senses, conditioning, belief systems and our own personality. I suppose that means that we can see the same objective thing and describe and interpret it in very different ways that make it seem different enough to get characterized as a differing view of that reality. Wow, that’s a head turner isn’t it? For something to be real, it is almost, by definition, supposed to be able to be seen as less than real. And there we have our world today. I see inflation and interpret it one way. My friend Kevin sees the same inflation and interprets it in an entirely different way, whether because he believes his view to be real or whether he (or I, for that matter) come at it with a different set of beliefs. Its hard to agree on anything if you cannot make a common observation of reality.
I am getting weary of the political battles of the day. It has been five or six years now of constant struggle and I am not inherently interested in politics enough to keep my level of engagement and enragement at full throttle. I have given to so many blue candidates and causes that I am on overload. My inboxes, both email and text with the occasional candidate direct telephone call as well, is so full with causes and candidates that are linked in a web of concerns that it has worn me down. I was never a terribly political person and while college freshmen friends were actively protesting and canvassing, I was catching up on five years of missed TV shows (missed due to living overseas). During my career days, I had points of view here and there that led to political opinions, but mostly I was busy getting on with whatever I was onto at the moment. This was not apathy though it could clearly be characterized as such by the more fervent in the community. This was benign neglect while life went on.
In the past six years it has been much harder to hide from the reality. Every political decision impacts me directly. More taxes, less gun safety, less choice for women, more nativism, less globalization, more hunger and inequality, less comfort, more angst. I am even tired of writing about it though I feel compelled to do so every once in a while. A reader of my blog recently sent me a comment saying that he loved my blog but liked the political stories less and hoped I would write less of them. It caused me to wonder why I write them at all in a world that is not exactly without plentiful pundits and opinions that get air time every day. I am unclear if I have a unique perspective that people need to hear and I am less and less inclined to shout from the rooftops.
But worlds collide more and more and that makes it hard to avoid politics in my writing. Even when I do not start out writing a political piece, it works its way in somewhere or other and then makes the story more political than I expected. What’s that about? I want to live in a world where all the planets stay in their own orbit and never collide. That may be lacking in reality, so I am prepared to treat it like Einstein’s moon, I won’t look at it so maybe it won’t exist.
I cannot speak authoritatively as to whether the sound of a tree falling in a remote forrest out of human earshot really exists, or whether the moon ceases to exist if one just turns away and doesn’t look at it,— the perception versus reality conundrum. But, what I will say is that if reality,— either that perceived by you or someone else, infringes on your sensibilities, or sometimes even your very existence, you have the right (or even an obligation), to write about it. If your perceived reality is not expressed, then someone else’s will usually prevail. And it may be very onerous or harmful to your perception of what life should be.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ~ a Voltairean principle
Good perspective