Senior News August, 2004 Vol. 25. No. 8

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Kathleen Kistler has learned to wait and hear her inner voice

Sign up for the Over-60 Program at HSU

Nero burned while Rome fiddled

Sandi Fitzpatrick to head California Commission on Aging

Berg to unveil an aging master plan

Pick up a copy today! Better yet, subscribe and never miss an issue!

Brought to you by

Remembering Spirit
Nero burned while Rome fiddled

Every week I go to the web site www.commondreams.org. The nonprofit group gathers a selection of the best editorials and opinion pieces published around the world every day on topics of peace, justice and democracy. My heart is lifted by ideas written clearly and powerfully.

In this election year I am passionately interested in ideas - especially in how Republicans and Democrats could have civil conversations with one another about the issues of our day. How could we listen to the words and look into the meaning coming from the other guy? What news sources can we listen to or watch and really trust?

I write this month because I feel like I'm fiddling while our country is burning - burning from a civil war inside our own shores. The challenge is that we are almost completely divided in this country - half of us feel that if the Democrats unseat the president, we'll go down the tubes. The other half feel just as certain that if Bush wins another term in office, we'll go down the tubes. We are so divided that we avoid our neighbors and former friends when they pass us on the street wearing the other guy's button.

I say that we should all register to vote and then show up with three of our neighbors on election day and exercise our right to vote.

But I don't believe that voting will do anything to heal the wounds that are festering in our country. We don't believe that we have to bother to listen to one another if we have the votes to win 50 percent plus one in the popular election. But even less than 50 percent wins. In the 2000 election, Bush won 48.7 percent of the popular votes while Gore won 48.8 percent. This is not a mandate, this is an either/or. It is a coin which fell this side up. But more than half the country is represented by the other side. I wish everyone elected these days could be coalition builders.

With this dichotomy rushing into every realm of society, this duality literally pulling us apart, this civil war brewing under the surface of everything, what are we to do? I think that the only way to change this situation and avoid the deepening abyss between us is to take down the walls.

o Commit to contacting one person who thinks differently and have a real conversation about each person's hopes and dreams. Start building bridges across the canyon. Find someone new every week and do it again.

o When you find yourself hurling insults at the other guy's ads on television, withdraw your words and look within. What is at stake in your life that he has to be so wrong? How is the ad being worded that makes you feel he is so distasteful? Whom do you need to listen to more closely in your life?

o Decide against duality. Avoid saying "either/or" statements. Try saying "both/and" statements. Try creating a pie big enough for this and that to coexist.

You could argue that these actions can't be taken because all of the issues have mutually exclusive values. I say that is the crux of the matter - we desperately need to create arguments and solutions that are mutually inclusive to put out this fire of civil war in our hearts.

- by Barbara Clark, Senior News editor