My whole life I searched for what was right and what was
wrong in every situation. I would usually listen to people around me, see what
they had to say and try to understand why they thought so. I would ultimately
stop and think and more importantly try to listen to how I felt about the
situation, I would draw a few different conclusions and sure enough one would
resonate with me over all the other ones and that’s how I knew that was truth,
or at least my truth.
During my early years that process was a lot more simplistic
and the conclusions were very much polarized – I saw the world as black or
white, there wasn’t any grey in there. Then, as time went on and I acquired
more life experience I started realizing that things were not so much black or
white, and that there was a lot of grey in the world, but I still tried to
reach a set conclusion and whoever saw things differently from my truth or
believed differently, they had to be wrong since the conclusion I reached felt
so right.
Then something happened in the last year or so. Through
various, many small experiences and analyzing societal situations, I started
contemplating that in a given situation both parties may very well be right
while believing differently or taking opposite actions.
About a month ago I listened to an NPR story which made me
solidify my assumption. A new trend started in France some time ago, the Locks
of Love. This is when young couples would take a lock and close it together on
a bridge as a symbol of their love. This trend caught on in various cities,
such as New York, and was now catching on in Washington DC as well. Well, there
was an instance where the
bridge collapsed due to the heavy weight of the hundreds of locks placed on it.
In order to avoid anything like that in DC, the Department of roads and bridges
(or something like that, you know the one in charge with these things), went
around and started breaking these locks as soon as they would be placed, so
that the trend wouldn’t catch on and cause any problems. Then the moderator of
the talk show had asked listeners to call in and give their two cent on who
they thought was right – the young couples in love placing the locks on the bridge
or the department of roads and bridges. So I took a moment and pondered this
question and have quickly concluded that they are both right. That in their own
sphere of existence and capacity they were both doing what they should be doing.
I couldn’t condemn the young couples (the idea would be appealing to a younger
me), and I couldn’t condemn the state department people who are simply doing their
jobs.
I also thought that if they could both be
right in this situation, then there may be other instances that both parties could as well be
right. I applied same principles to more complex and serious matters, such as
homosexuality. Maybe the issue at hand it’s not so much who is right and who is
wrong, in other words I don’t need to decide if gay people are born that way or
not, I also don’t need to approve of their lifestyle or endorse it. Maybe the
reason God had allowed this same gender attraction is not to change each others’
views on the issue, but to see how we would treat each other in spite of our
differences. Maybe our goal should be to have love and charity especially
towards those who live and believe very differently from ourselves.
And you know what effect it has had on me? It actually made
me feel more relaxed, it took the pressure off of thinking I needed to change
others around me. It validated my own truths while being willing to accept
others with their own.
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| Locks of Love - Portland, Maine 2014 |
