There is an old Zen saying which I cannot quote word for word, but basically, it says practice is like walking through a fog. You get wet, little by little; it happens so slowly you don’t even notice until suddenly you notice you are soaked. I had one of these moments this past week.
Thursday at school I was talking to a classmate and we were talking politics (ruh rowh). A statement was made by said classmate about how they believed more government surveillance was needed, not more curbs on their power. It was a “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about” type of statement. Now, four years ago I would have probably flew off the handle at this, and I must admit that at first I felt anger arise. However, I realized it was manifesting, and did not let it rule me. We had both had birthdays in the past two weeks and I had been thinking a lot about my age. I tried to empathize, to see where they were coming from. And once I started doing this I realized they were a decade younger than I, THAT was the answer; the anger dissipated.
When we are younger, we have the politics of our parents. When we get older, hopefully we question these politics and evaluate them, we develop our own. Perhaps they change, perhaps not, but we SHOULD question them and develop our own opinions. I know when I was a child I had my parents politics. I am a child of a military family. I was a Reagan baby. I thought Reagan was great, I mean, he was my President. Our government could do no wrong. I was a conservative. But my mother and father also taught me to expand my horizons, to go out and find my own answers.
When my classmate was BORN, Reagan was no longer President. They never saw the Berlin Wall fall like me. They never saw their parent go off to war. They don’t remember being taught in school about the evils of the Soviet Union, and how they were our enemy, and then waking up one day and they were gone and being told Russia was our biggest ally. They were in elementary school (if I do my math correctly) when the Battle of Seattle occurred, when the government illegally spied on their own civilians, illegally arrested thousands of union members and political activists, illegally shot military grade tear gas at their civilians in violation of national and international law (thankfully many of those responsible eventually lost their jobs) (by the way, the rioting occurred AFTER the police started firing tear gas). They weren’t even in high school when the biggest peace protests in history occurred in the run-up to the second Iraq War. They were still in elementary or middle school when saying you disagreed with President Bush in public could gain you a visit from the FBI; when we kidnapped people off the streets and sent them to foreign countries to be tortured for months, for their families to think they were dead, only to find out they were innocent.
More personally, they haven’t been branded a traitor to their country by friends for disagreeing with the Iraq war. They haven’t been spied on by the state police for being an advocate for peace, they haven’t been illegally detained by police for their manner of dress (at least, I doubt they have, don’t quote me on this, this is more what was going through my head at the time). Have they been illegally searched for drugs (which I never used nor had)? (I doubt it). When my parents were in school segregation was still in effect and advocating for full rights for African Americans got you an FBI file for being a dangerous communist and could end your career. Could the same be the said for theirs? They have not had the same experiences in life as I have, how could they POSSIBLY hold the same beliefs as I?
They are at the age where my own opinions were truly beginning to form. I must show patience. Showing anger would only cause them to be angry as well and would accomplish nothing. Perhaps they will one day share the same beliefs as I do, perhaps they will not. But they must have the freedom to decide. My anger came from a desire to impose my beliefs on others when you get down to the nitty gritty of it.
So to that classmate, thank you for being my teacher.
On a side note, I know I haven’t posted any artwork on here for MONTHS. I am preparing a digital portfolio as we speak for a review next week and will post as soon as it is ready.
By the way, I think nothing speaks to how corporately controlled our media is as the coverage of the protests in Seattle by ABC. They covered them until a Disney store window was broken (their parent company). After that you wouldn’t have known anything was happening in Seattle.
