“I lack the moral fiber to make enemies.” – (Murray Kempton, 1917-1997)
When was the last time you had a truthful conversation with a friend or a family member? When was the last time you felt as if you were free enough or safe enough to speak your mind? When was the last time you had to set a context into which your conversation would fit before saying what was on your mind or in your heart? When was the last time you felt as if someone was really listening to you, suspending judgment and being fully present for you?
More and more in our daily lives we are encouraged to not offend others or not to allow ourselves to be victims of another’s offensive behavior or demeanor. That sounds virtuous. Don’t harm anyone, what’s wrong with that? The problem is that just about anything anyone says these days harms someone else. We can’t avoid harming others. Just an aside, when I was a kid a classic playground comeback was – “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” My generation grew up believing that. Words were tools of communication, not weapons. And it was in the struggle to learn to communicate that we found our voices, our beliefs, and our friends.
The issue isn’t whether we harm one another by our actions and words. The issue is whether we consciously or intentionally seek to harm others.
Our hearts have been hardened by the injustice and inequality that constantly confronts us. So, we are short-tempered, bitter and frustrated. How can we react in any other way to the constant confrontation to our moral and ethical standards when we categorize folks as us/them, rich/poor, advantaged/disadvantaged, urban/rural, etc?
A quick example – gun violence in Chicago. We are told every murder is a result of some combination of ethical or moral imperatives that have gone awry. It’s police brutality or gang violence, or poverty, or hopelessness, or …. Murder and death have become acceptable to us as ways to cope with our lack of ability to talk with one another. We do not trust each other and so we do not speak the truth. We have no hope that conversation will lead us anywhere that will produce better results.
It’s become the norm to duck responsibility. Telling the truth makes people suspicious of us.
We have become so careful in what we say and do that our predictability results in our dullness. We are boring and we are bored. This is the inevitable conclusion for us as a people. So, we are angered, shocked and saddened by gun violence, but we do not speak our concerns out loud for fear of harming someone’s sensibilities. We are willing to let violence win rather than speaking up and becoming part of the solution. We allow ourselves to be silenced for fear that we will be misunderstood or that we will seem to have taken sides.
With gun violence, there are no sides. Dead civilians are no less dead than police. Young people are no less dead than middle-aged folks. It goes back to harm, real harm, brutal harm. Intentionally killing someone is never excusable no matter who fired the bullets or who was killed. We know right from wrong. We would be better able to identify right from wrong if we asked better questions and had more honest dialogue.
So where does hope fit in?
Truth and hope are related. If we are bold enough to tell the truth, to trust one another, we will find hope for reconciliation and forgiveness. When we speak the truth, when we seek out the causes of our concern and work together at solving issues that make us wary of speaking truth, we are on the way to a future that points to hope.
Living in hope affirms us as we speak the truth and seek after answers to difficult questions. Living in hope allows us to see beyond what passes for dialogue. Living in hope creates the opportunity to find and solve root causes. Living in hope helps us to understand that conversation is not always confrontation.
Perhaps in time we will learn to trust one another so that when we speak, the one being addressed can be certain that we mean them no harm. What are the common problems humankind faces and how can we form communities in which we trust one another to work together for solutions?
Finally, back to the beginning, “I lack the moral fiber to make enemies.” Enemies become friends when we speak together, learn together, solve problems together and heal together. But to change an enemy into a friend requires us to be vulnerable. It requires us to live a life with noble purpose. That’s our challenge, that’s our chance at hope.
It is interesting how these truthful conversations of which you speak are applicable to two people as well as to whole populations of people. The phrase ” Don’t mistake impact for intent ” comes to mind.
I like your quote – “don’t mistake impact for intent.” Conversations should never be combat. When what one hears in conversation results in discomfort for either party they should take that as an opportunity for clarification, not disengagement.