I’m running sluggish today. I woke up at 5 with a sore throat so I gargled with salt water and went back to bed. It just doesn’t seem to make sense to get up early to write when I’m getting sick and probably the thing I need most is sleep to get better and make the best use of my time.
I still feel lousy and I’m using up book writing time to finish this post, so I think I’ll make it a cursory reflection on the state of things.
Besides being sick, I’m feeling pretty good. The weekend was good. I followed through on my commitment to stay off twitter and youtube (at least for political commentary…actually I don’t think I went on at all). I found myself wanting to check a number of times, but I stayed strong and my life is none the worse for it. I got a post done on Saturday and got a little bit more sleep.
This morning I went right back onto twitter to catch up. I think I’m okay with that until this whole twisted saga comes to some kind of a conclusion. But I’m going to work harder to set my boundaries around my time. No more checking for tonight and no political commentaries. I think I’m caught up on all the buzz.
I find it interesting sometimes to take a look at some of the twitter feeds or news sites from the far right side of things. It’s crazy how differently people are seeing the same events. It’s extremely polarized (to put it mildly). Something happens and one side says, “Proof of wrongdoing!” and the other side says, “Vindicated! We told you so.”
Surely there is a place where people can agree on facts. Surely people can admit that there are some things that are true and some things that are not.
I suppose if you’ve got a big tree in your yard, someone can say that they hate the tree, and someone else can say that they love the tree. Someone can say that the tree should be cut down because it might be rotten on the inside, while someone else could say that the tree is an important part of the area, giving shade, providing the biological function that trees do and just giving a bit of character to the neighbourhood. You could ignore the tree and talk about how the grass is dying underneath it. You could talk about the tree that used to grow across the street. You could say all those things, and apart from the possibility of rot, there’s not much to argue about…but you could certainly argue about all those things if you wanted to.
It’s a tree and there’s no denying that fact, but you don’t have to talk about that tree in a certain way. You can talk about it however you want. If it comes down to an argument over whether to cut the tree down or to let it grow, if it’s a decision based on the number of people who support any particular option, then facts really don’t matter – if all you want is to win the battle of wills, the only thing that matters is getting enough people on your side. Maybe cutting down the tree is going to be disastrous, no matter how you do it – maybe letting it grow will be disastrous – maybe it has a diseased core and it will soon fall on your house. But if you really really want to win the argument it’s possible you could miss such a fact and throw your lot into the wrong camp.
Whatever side I might stand on when it comes to that tree, I just hope that I’d be able to hear the facts if there were facts that made a clear case either way. If the tree really needed to be cut down and I loved that tree, I hope that I’d be able to swallow my pride and come around. I guess it all depends on where you stand. It might not matter to my neighbours, but maybe it matters a whole lot to the squirrels and the caterpillars who live in that tree – maybe for them it’s a matter of life and death.
Strange times. I just know that there’s so much noise right now – so much flying back and forth – so many voices – so many loudspeakers, that a person can throw doubt on even the most undeniable of truths.
I don’t feel bad about wanting to follow all the excitement. It’s interesting. It’s also important, but I do want to make sure that I can keep it at bay and allow myself to continue to focus on the trees in my own yard.
