Elbows Up

If you’re new, hi and welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. You might be wondering what’s happening. I don’t mean in this country - I wonder what’s happening in this country every day - I mean with this podcast. Every week I write an essay, and then a couple of days later I record a talk about the topics I wrote about - after I’ve had a chance to read the responses and be in conversations with people - and often commiserate about the insanity of existing right now.

This week I wrote about my son, and the time he fell off the monkey bars at recess and broke his elbow. He was six. It turns out a lot of people have fallen off the monkey bars and broken bones. Mostly when they were kids.

Also, I laugh when I think of the climbing structures I grew up with, because they were so huge. They were a good twenty feet off the ground. Sometimes I wonder how any of us are still here. Look at this:

I fell off a rainbow-shaped metal climbing structure when I was five - right when I got to the highest point and was feeling proud of myself for overcoming my fear - and hit my nose on one of the bars on the way down. I didn’t break anything, but my nose bled like a geyser. It bled so much my friends thought I was going to die and I believed them, because we were five. One of my friends actually said, “Oh no! You’re definitely going to die. People always die when they bleed like that.” I did not die. Anyway, my teachers were very kind to me.

Some of you had stories about how incredible your teachers or principals were, and some of you had experiences like we had with the principal at my son’s school, and the nurse, too - disappointing and really hard to forgive.

Which brings me to the bigger topic of the essay and the podcast - basic common decency. One of the comments this week (hi, Paul) was that “common decency” is becoming an oxymoron. It is dizzying and heartbreaking to watch people twisting themselves in knots (or not twisting themselves at all) - shrugging off some of the horrific things happening in our country every day.

We’re wired for compassion. We’re meant to care about each other because it feels good to care about other people, and because our fates are tied. Historically, when human beings do terrible things to one another, it’s because they’ve decided this person, or this group of people is “other” - they are not like us, they are a danger or a threat to the common good.

When you start putting people outside your circle of compassion, you might think you’re dehumanizing them, but it’s your own humanity you’re sacrificing.

When you hurt someone accidentally, but you don’t call to check on them because you’re worried about liability and culpability, you’ve already lost the battle for your soul. When you decide one man is more important than the Constitution, democracy, or your fellow country-people, something has gone very deeply awry.

For so many of us, it feels like we are living in an episode of the Twilight Zone. I would give almost anything for Rod Serling to come around the corner. If he did, I’d be like “I freaking KNEW it!! I knew this couldn’t be real!” Because it does feel like we’re in the upside down. Like we slipped through a portal.

I got into a conversation with a woman who was utterly convinced Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark and their dog Gilbert were assassinated by a “radical left-wing lunatic” and when I explained to her that was absolutely bonkers and that Vance Boelter is a Trump MAGA supporter and had registered in the Republican presidential primary (and that he had tried to kill state senator John Hoffman - also a Democrat - along with his wife Yvette and their daughter Hope), and that he had 45 more Democrats on a list in his car along with 35 abortion providers - she said I was listening to legacy media, and just because I said it didn’t make it true.

Me saying doesn’t make it true - the facts of the case make it true. Just like children being pulled out of bed half naked, zip-tied together and thrown into the backs of U-hauls should horrify everyone. Just like people being attacked by their own government for protesting peacefully should upset everyone. Some things are easy to figure out. You have to work really hard to pretend they’re okay when they aren’t - and there’s a cost that comes along with doing that.

The cost is your integrity, and I wouldn’t exchange that for anything in the world. Good people are easy to spot. When they make a mistake, they own it. They don’t say mean-spirited, terrible things. They don’t take healthcare away from hardworking people, or free lunches away from hungry kids. They don’t grab women by the pussy. Up isn’t down. Wrong isn’t right.

Rod Serling isn’t coming around the corner, but we have each other. If you’re hurting, it’s okay, me, too. If you’re scared, anxious, angry, sad… it’s okay, me, too. We have each other. We fall together and we get back up together.

If the monkey bars didn’t kill us, this won’t, either. Sending you love.

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