mixed

“I am a mixed grill of beauty and self-centeredness, pettiness and magnaminity, judgment and humility. On a bad day, I’m pushing old ladies on the Titanic out of the way to get to lifeboats. (They’re old, they’re going to die.) When I pray, I have more good days. I tend to do more service to the poor and lonely, where joy resides.” — Anne Lamott

According to Wikipedia, magnanimity is the virtue of being great of mind and heart. It encompasses, usually, a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes.

I got lost in a comment section this week. I went down the rabbit hole. My insides screamed back at the injustice, the hateful words. I said things. I blocked people. As a friend said, “The comment section, where faith in humanity goes to die.”

I don’t even need to get into the details, the sides, the egos, the stubborn unmoving pride. You know what I mean. I could say all that’s been said. What happened to civility, kindness, and the ability to respond, rather than react? But maybe we never did have that the way we thought we did? Maybe we are all just pretneders. Because behind our “morals” or “values” is always the risk of fundamentalism and fear. Ego always reigns behind our “rightness”.

The truth is that I have no idea what to do. Speaking up sets you up for attack and maybe so be it. Maybe oh well. Speak up anyway. But with many folks that does nothing. If we’ve learned anything it’s that we have brought ourselves so low in our division, the higher mind and greatness of heart have floated off into the Internet ethers. No one can be convinced that being “nice” is part of the values and morals we claim. We may fool ourselves. We may stand so firmly on our opinions and “research” that we figure acting from our lowest selves is necessary and the only way to “protect our rights” but of course this is a lie.

What do I want, other than a naive dream of world peace? A magical disappearance of sickness of the mind and body? My hopes are often too lofty despite the evidence that people are really awful a lot of the time. Incapable. There is always room for growth but we are in rabbit holes and bunkers and cages, many of our own making. We the free are figuratively down rabbit holes and in our bunkers and inside our cages, holding the key.

Some have real bunkers at home. Some are actually caged. Prisons. Retention Centers. Mental health wards. Chemical dependency treatment centers. Others of us have freedom, but deny ourselves the fruits of it with our opinions, on war or abortion or vaccines and masks. So many, many opinions have we held. We are a society built on opinions.

So often I sit with myself in an “I don’t know” position, with an old school “walk a mile in their shoes” attitude. Yeah, even them. I am reminding myself, when looking at the stars or the ocean or a prairie, how very small I am, how finite my life. This is how I want it to be, though working hard at setting aside ego and pride is an awful job most days. The underlying fear and desperation for control wants to rear its horned head, kick some ass.

With the onset of the Internet, social media, forums, etc., this ability to recall smallness and dig for humility has been abandoned by many. The true colors of our worst tendencies have risen to the top and it is in your face, every time you scroll. We still have a multitude of commonalities, but we aren’t looking at those. I have no advice or answers. This is a lament.

“There were moments when I understood that there was nothing much I was going to understand or figure out. There was simply the present moment, awareness, impermanence, birdsong, love. There is no fixing this setup here. It seems broken and ruined at times, but it isn’t; it’s simply the nature of human life.” — Anne Lamott

This makes me think of acceptance and my insides rail against it. The truth hurts. There is no fixing a comment section, conspiracy theories, extremism. I am only able to choose openeness, willingness and kindness for myself, and I sure do fail a lot.

What I refuse to forget is the growth and change I’ve seen in many people. I have proof from personal experiences with what some would call miracles. People rising above the power of self to lay down their lives for others, all others. To let go of thinking they have all the control. To truly stop, take a deep breath and respond rather than react. I have seen people soften and get over themselves. I have seen people stop spouting opinions and start living love instead.

Nobody wants to see themselves as self-centered egomaniacs but we all are. If we choose to really see it, and then work toward not living it out, we’re the lucky ones. Uncaged, out of the rabbit hole, free. So much of humankind has no tools for this trade, so I will let them go, let them focus on pushing old ladies out of the way to get to the lifeboat first. I’ll maybe even forgive them, and myself. I don’t know.