Our Continuing Chronic Kerfuffles

Just Thinkin’

Family gatherings are memorable portions of our Holidays. Memorable good, not memorable bad.

I don’t mean to suggest family gatherings should be avoided but it does seem that tables of rich foods and glasses of wine make some folks look about the table and decide that the seated family is longing to hear their social and political opinions.

I viewed having so many of my family gathered in one place was the ultimate holiday treat. Perhaps because this season more than most, I treasured the physical presence of my family.

Still, I concluded that among the many effects of the COVID epidemic and our concurrent social and political divisions, was a sense of loneliness. A sense of ineptness seemed pervasive.

Our capacity to listen to another seemed diminished. Some sat on the edge of their seats, anxiously thinking, “If you’ll just hush, I’ll tell you how it really is.” On the other hand, I felt blessed that in the overall view of life, for Billie and me, our family views are rather harmonious.

Agreeable melodies made for easy listening around the dinner table. This is not true at so many modern gatherings. It seems so many of us can no longer gather and express our beliefs without demeaning and devaluing the beliefs of those who didn’t agree with us. Somehow, we perceive a threat in the ideas of those who do not agree with us. A mental totality.

“If you are right, then I must be wrong and I’m not wrong.” There seemed a totality of thought that just isn’t true. And we know better. I think we know better. It seems like it is just easier to judge others as wrong – or inept – or even evil.

On Christmas Eve on the Today Show, I heard Cardinal Timothy Dolan express a concept I liked. “America is not evil.” He further proposed, “Evil is not something but rather a lack of something. The absence of good.”

I wondered, “Is evil our inability to accept the ideas of others we find unacceptable?” Disagreeing with me can’t be evil. I do believe in embracing oth- ers who beliefs are different than mine is good.

It seems the acceptance of others is lacking in our country today. Let’s pray and pass the egg nog. I hope when our new Congress soon gathers, the Chaplain will offer her opening prayer and then someone will pass the egg nog. I pray that in a more congenial environment, our new Congress will sip the egg nog of reconciliation and begin to listen to each other.

Listen to each other. How hard can it be? Oh. That hard. I think we are more focused on division than direction. I’m just thinkin’ that needs to stop.

I just don’t believe we are making an effort to understand each other. Sophocles once said, “Success is dependent upon effort.” I think failure is insured by an absence of effort.

Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time. – George W. Bush Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.