You can tell a girl you still love them in spite of everything and they may or may not respond. Unless you take the risk of opening your mouth you cannot know what they will or will not say.
There is no way to control it because we cannot control people.
You can go the opposite direction and tell someone you don’t love them anymore and again you have no idea what the outcome will be.
It is certainly more interesting to pull their pony tail, make fun of their being from Ohio or wherever because there is that chance that maybe you’ll get a more rewarding response.
Thought about it all because I realized I had been unfriended by several people and figured it is the consequences of truth telling.
I didn’t hold back about Trump being an unhinged disaster or Qanon being the province of the mentally ill, weak and ignorant.
Don’t know when they pulled the trigger and don’t care because none of them were important to me.
The Consequences Of Truth Telling
A part of me is disappointed and maybe even a little sad about it all because I’d like to be able to say political beliefs haven’t influenced my relationships.
But it has, not in every case because there are still some who have so much history with me I feel like we have been able to move past some of this.
That is based upon conversations in which they convinced me they didn’t hold the very worst values this man espouses as being truth. Because I believe their rationale and have seen their actions for so many years I can get beyond.
It is tenuous and there are questions in my head about whether they can be redeemed.
That is a terrible thing to say, an arrogant and obnoxious thing, but it makes sense to me and for now I can live with it.
And frankly I want to have deeper conversations with them to explore this and figure out if I am wrong or if I am right.
It is a question of values and I need to know if we share the right ones. If we don’t there may be some hard decisions to make.
Go back to the beginning and if you love me, well you better be prepared to accept quite a bit because I am not easy.
I dance in the fucking fire and am willing to speak my mind in a very blunt manner. Doesn’t mean I will, but I might and I expect to do/receive the same
It is not a one way street.
Don’t know if that makes sense, not going to worry about it. You understand me or you don’t and if you don’t, well that is ok. You can submit and say you want to learn or just walk.
That is how life is.
Two Decades Later
My oldest nephew and my son are practicing for their big moment in my baby sister’s wedding.
They are about ten months apart in age, for a short time they’ll both be 20.
Tomorrow my niece turns 19, if I remember correctly she is cruising around the interior of the room the boys are heading towards, watched by an aunt or two.
The three or them all voted in this election, their first presidential election.
In theory their first could be the most consequential of their lives and if my wish is met that is how it will go.
We’ll muddle and stagger our way through the dumpster fire the next few months will be and head towards repairing a broken country and stability.
Many say that is impossible and we are irreparably broken. There may be truth in that, but as of today I see possibility.
It had to be worse during and after the Civil War. Had to be more acrimonious and harder, even without social media, a 24 hour news cycle and larger population.
*****
Both of those boys were born just prior to 9/11, in between the first Gulf War and the next ventures into Iraq and Afghanistan.
The world changed not long after they were born and it did so more than once.
They know stories about pre 9/11 travel and some other ancient history but they didn’t live it.
So they don’t really miss what they never had.
An Uncertain Future
People write about an uncertain future as if so much is certain. Laws of nature are certain.
Gravity, the sun rising and setting, the earth rotates, we have to breathe to live but aside from that so much is uncertain.
I know what and who I miss.
I know what I am trying to accomplish and have an idea about how I am trying to do it.
Don’t know if it will or will not work. Can’t say that I will or won’t wake up tomorrow.
I have no reason to believe I won’t and given the time I put in on work today I better because it would be a huge waste of time to have spent my last day on earth on most of the crap I did today.
Would be a huge surprise to me if I didn’t wake up and got out of three meetings tomorrow which is pretty much a guarantee for why I am confident I’ll wake up.
But damn if it doesn’t feel like we are on the verge of some major life changes.
Suppose that some of those who chose to let go because of the consequences of truth telling wouldn’t care if I shared or didn’t share it with them.
But maybe they would, can’t really worry about that.
Can’t control people, can only control myself.
“See dad, I always heard you when you said it, even if I didn’t like hearing it.”
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