I know what you're probably thinking: "Sure, all of this interdependence stuff sounds great on paper, but it's too idealistic. I have rent/mortgage due every month, I'm overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated, I have a side job to help make ends meet, I'm exhausted, I've got (insert medical problem), and being a parent is like having yet another part-time job. There is no practical way to live into the reality of interdependence."
That is true: in a way. If we think within a dualistic paradigm, then there is either interdependence or individualism; St. Francis or Bernie Madoff. But I would argue that dualism is an unproductive philosophy to take into the world.
Here are two examples of interactions I have had in the past few years with two friends I love and respect.
In the first, I mentioned that I preferred a democratic candidate over a republican in a particular election. My friend was genuinely incredulous. "But you're such a nice person!" she said.
In the second instance, another friend was recommending that my wife and I considering moving into her neighborhood. After extolling some of the virtues of her community, she proudly declared that "hardly any republicans" lived there.
As I wrote, these are two smart, decent, generous people whom I love very much. Still, I have never forgotten those two conversations. Something just did not seem right about that type of thinking.
It is true that, for most of us, the type of agape love demonstrated by King or Mandela is not realistic. We revere those types of modern-day saints for a reason. They are special. We are fortunate if we are blessed with a leader with that kind of love, sacrifice, and vision once in a generation. But, just maybe, we can start by holding people with different political ideologies with compassion: not empathy, certainly not pity, but honest-to-goodness, authentic compassion. Instead of seeing them as worse than us, less than us, or even inhuman, we can choose to see them as companions on the journey home.
Politicians and the media exploit our outrage and division for their own profit. For that, shame on them.
We allow them to outrage and divide us. For that, shame on us.
The Choice Is Ours.
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When a family friend and fellow Sikh was killed in a hate crime, Valarie Kaur made the choice, after years of anger and mourning, to visit the perpetrator in prison. Valarie chose to offer the man her forgiveness. She went on to found the Revolutionary Love Project, and her TED talk on Revolutionary Love has been viewed nearly 3-million times to date. Instead of drowning in understandable outrage, Ms. Kaur speaks about our current social malaise as the "birthing pains of the nation yet to come." She is smart, energetic, and engaged, but her work is always "rooted in the ethic of love."
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Arno Michaelis is a former skinhead leader and white supremacy musician. Upon hearing Michaelis's story in his own words, the first thing that struck me was that there is such a thing as white supremacist music. As a musician and music educator, I try to teach that music is love, beauty, and community. The idea of "hate music" is almost too much to bear. He also speaks about a black woman he befriended who used to serve him at a fast food restaurant. When she commented on his white supremacist tattoos, he became filled with shame and retreated further into hate and violence. Ultimately, though, it was through relationships with the people he was trying so hard to hate that he came to see the delusion in his thinking.
On August 5, 2012, a white-supremacist killed 6 people at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee. Pardeep Singh Kaleka, the son of one of the victims, made the choice to found Serve2Unite, an organization dedicated to healing our wounds of hate with the medicine of love, education, and community. He co-founded this organization with none other than Arno Michaelis.
We can't all be King, Mandela, Kaur, or Kaleka. Let's start with being the best versions of ourselves.
The Choice Is Ours.
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If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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