As many of us prepare to celebrate Christmas, while the world is ablaze with war and suffering, it is easy to feel comforted by our relatively safe and cozy lives within our relatively peaceful country. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact our gratitude should really be boundless as we see how others are forced to live, through no fault of their own.
But gratitude can easily morph into entitlement, as if there is something other than luck that determined the circumstances under which we were born. There are many people who are asking you to believe that you are unique among humans, and that you “deserve” what you have, therefore requiring you to “expel” those who would “poison” the blood of Americans. Huh? Is there really only one King of the Mountain? Or maybe just the King and his buddies, up there keeping us safe from the “others”?
Despite the many possible layers of camouflage, whether money, power or fame, all humans struggle with the underlying question, “Am I safe?” We have many ways of manifesting this survival instinct: we fight, we flee, we freeze, we follow. We tend and befriend. Or we accumulate more wealth and power, not realizing that there will never be enough. Even “strongman” types of authoritarian leaders reveal their insecurity when they try to destroy their enemies rather than work together for universal benefits.
The ability to imagine how we might feel if we were in the shoes of our “enemy” is truly a very advanced emotional skill. It’s so much easier just to hate the bad guys! So how about if we had a simple way of acquiring this skill, that would actually change the entire world for the better, very quickly? The only drawback is that “simple” does not mean “easy.” Oops, could be a deal-breaker.
“Treat others as you want to be treated.” Every one of the world’s major religions features a version of this statement as a foundational principle. So that should really cover almost all of the billions of us who live on this planet. The Golden Rule, as many call it, can be easily taught to our children alongside reading, writing and arithmetic. It does not favor one or another political point of view. It can be modeled by parents who teach their children many fundamental attitudes about how to approach life as well as how to relate to other humans. We wouldn’t need diversity training if we remembered that all humans share 99.9% of their DNA and that we all care about the same things.
The tragic, almost incomprehensible violence of war would become a relic of the past if we learned how to put ourselves in the shoes of those who seem very different from us. For instance, our immigration problem has become more difficult to solve as we create arbitrary categories that result in dismissing the suffering and dreams of people who simply want to be safe and raise their children in a caring community. Photos of families standing in line to register with the Border Patrol don’t fit the rhetoric of murderers, rapists and criminals invading our country to replace and destroy us. Would you continue to live in a community where violent gangs controlled the city and your children could be killed at any moment? Where there was no safe way to earn a living and support your family? Can you imagine Bandera as such a place? Would you stay if there was another option?
Contrary to what the extremist politicians would have you believe, compromise allows people to come together in strength, not weakness. Isolationism and excluding others are tactics of frightened, insecure leaders who need their followers to be afraid of everyone else, except the leader. Interestingly, that’s not what Jesus said, and he’s considered a pretty strong leader, right? He said that loving all our neighbors is the true path to God for all of us. Are you perhaps a Christian?
Merry Christmas.
Susan Hull is a retired clinical psychologist and an Independent voter who has learned a great deal about different points of view since moving to Bandera four years ago. Her Golden Rule skills have gotten better, but still need lots of practice.
