Catching Those Bees

“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still,” is how the old saying goes and like so many pithy old sayings it’s got more truth to it than we are comfortable with. We are prone to convincing people by dominating and defeating them instead of finding and sharing a common humanity and reality to build agreement on while celebrating the differences that absolutely must exist between people if we are to continue to evolve forward. After all, every bit of progress of mankind that was not accomplished by accident happened because someone disagreed with the accepted beliefs and acted on that disagreement. We’ve see a lot of change over the last couple of centuries on the material universe front but when it comes to relationships between individuals, groups or countries . . . Eh, we haven’t traveled all that far. We bash each other over the head with missiles now instead of clubs, but we still get to bashin’ pretty quickly and therein lies the problem. The people who would get along with their fellow man, tolerate and even celebrate differences, are not prevailing. That fact could destroy all life on this planet one day if it continues to rule our world.

Another old saying: “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.” I heard that so many times as a child and, having a rather contrary nature, I used to delight in pointing out that you could catch even more with a rotting corpse and who the hell wants flies anyway? My daughter, who is very much like me, but with the rough and ragged edges all smoothed and polished, responded recently with the observation, “So Mom, change “flies” to “bees” and it works. Okay?” In the process of effectively checking the curmudgeon side of her mom at the very beginning of the conversation she highlighted the truth to the concept. Instead of getting an argument from me on a teensy, unimportant detail that would then sidetrack the more important issue we were discussing, she very smoothly and sweetly handled that and brought us both back on track. That is how it’s supposed to be done. I taught her well – sometimes I suspect partly by being an example of how not to do things.

So about immigration . . . You knew this was going to get back to that, didn’t you? Do you want to be right, or do you want to get something done? There are millions – literally millions of immigrants and Americans who are connected to those immigrants who are living a horror in this country that has no place in any human being’s life. The civil and human rights of millions trump party affiliations and individual preferences every time. Millions of people are more important than any of us as individuals and millions of people are praying that we can come together to solve this problem, to fix what has gone terribly wrong in this country and bring an end to the voracious deportation machine that is ripping the very fabric of family life in this country to shreds. This is so important that I, a miserable, difficult old Yankee, have managed to behave myself and make nice-nice for the purpose of getting this one issue handled. If I can do it, trust me, you can do it! Right now it is time to put down our swords and start finding ways we can get along to get this done (I have done this literally – the new helm I had made for my armor kit just before my friend, Audrius Kazenas, was taken by ICE sits shiny and undented on my desk – I have not indulged in a sword fight since that day). It’s bigger than us and unless we band together to be bigger than it, it will defeat us. Don’t listen to anyone who would throw this movement off track over party or personal issues. We seriously need to attract a few bees, to convince some people through understanding rather than force. Hey – we do this, maybe we can set an example of how people of diverse viewpoints can come together on other things. Ya want peace – this can be a step down the road that leads to it. It’s a start. Just sayin’ . . .