Half-Coherent

Actually, the subject line is a goal. Half-coherence would be good.

One of my exes talked about "toiling with an idea." I always thought it was a pretty apt description. I take ideas and worry them to death. Toiling includes toying, at first. But at some point, it just feels like work and then I need to write about it.

I've been toiling with a couple of ideas for a couple of days now. I know they are related. Somehow. We'll see how this goes. Bear with me, because they are important enough to have kept me toiling.

They're both related to the election and life in the U.S.

First, a lot of people have been saying, "I feel like I got my country back." I understand what they mean. I too have felt alienated from "my country"--the one where I was born and spent the first half (ulp) of my life--for the past eight years.

It feels terrible to disagree (vehemently, if not violently) with the actions of the people elected to serve you. To feel your heart race when your perspectives and beliefs are skewered and dismissed, at volume and with open disdain, in public, with no one representing your views. To feel unwelcome in community and "family" settings, to feel muzzled and unable to relax among the people who, in theory, are tied to you by more than blood.

And I am serious--vehemently--when I say that I don't want ANYONE to feel that way now.

But I have been wondering about something. Who took "my country" away from me? Who alienated, or was aliented from, whom? If I don't want to feel alienated and don't want those who voted for McCain (or opted not to vote) to feel alientated, we all have to hang in there. Nobody can check out of public life. Which is, basically what I did. No wonder I felt so remote from "my country"--I'd left, mentally and emotionally long before I left physically.

Life in Canada has been a fabulous process of finding myself again and anew. I am engaged in life in a way I wasn't in the U.S. This is my home. I'm not even tempted to consider anything else.

But why is it easier to live here? I tell myself that in my life in the U.S., I wasn't able to participate, that they didn't want to hear me, that I wasn't welcome if I didn't share all the "right" beliefs, that "they" shut me down and pushed me out.

Those things are true. And yet--I'm an adult. I'm the one who checked out. I walked away, physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. I put distance between myself and my country (physically, etc.). It's easier for me to live here, and live fully, in part because I have given myself permission to do so. So again--who alienated, or was alienated from, whom?

The second, somehow related idea is this: there is no "right to be agreed with" in the U.S. Constitution. All the freedoms that it mentions--I'm thinking mostly about the right to believe whatever and talk about those beliefs (without hurting others)--do have limits.

When I lived in the U.S., I wanted the right to be heard, listened to, and agreed with. That people would say, "What is your perspective? We never thought of it that way before. You're right; we'll change now." And there's no guarantee of that last sentence.

I'm not stupid--I know in my head that people don't have to agree with me. I never had that right in any house I ever lived in, including this one. In fact, I want my "family," whether we are related by blood or vow, to say "OK, but have you thought about this?"

What I did expect, and what is reasonable to expect in my home, was that my opinion would be respected. I was right to leave a life in which that was not true.

What we can all also reasonably expect from the world at large, outside a family, is similar. There must be room in the public sphere for people to express opinions, respectfully, without shouting and without being shouted down. Those opinions may not be reflected in law or policy or programming. But it should still be OK to have them.

So what I hope follows from this election is the installation (or restoration) of two of those rights: the right to be heard and listened to. Nobody has, or should reasonably expect, the right to be agreed with. But we do all expect, and deserve, to be treated with respect, and we must be held accountable when we do not treat others with that respect.

But all of that is still pretty fuzzy. For one thing, I keep thinking about what Linus said: "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand." In theory, I don't want anyone to feel as bad as I have the past eight years. Except, of course, for those individuals I know whose views I find repulsive, with whom I don't exchange respect. Those people can feel bad for awhile. A long while.

And while I'm copping to being as human as the next person, I get it, totally. It's hard not to feel that "I got my country back" because its incoming Commander-in-Chief tends to agree with me more than the last one did. Because my side "won." But that makes half of the country "losers," afraid and adrift as I was. And that makes my stomach hurt on their behalf, even (a little bit, but only a little bit) for the people whose opinions I don't respect.

I just know this: If I, and the U.S., can't move beyond that "us/them" divide, we all lose. This toiling mind just keeps coming back to that.

If only people would just AGREE WITH ME. What a fabulous place the world would be THEN.