The Totality of Causes
Or, no, I'm not having an affair. :)
Because I write local news in a community that tends to get all twisted up about things, I occasionally get angry emails. This morning, I got one from the same woman who two years ago was mad about a story I’d written concerning housing. She was volunteering at an event at the time for a local nonprofit and she drunkenly told me that I was having an affair with a man I’ve known for a very long time.
“You better go tell my husband then,” I said, laughing and pointing at Shaun. “He’s right over there on the stairs.”
I don’t think that was the reaction she expected because she just sort of sputtered and turned away for more wine.
For full disclosure: I’ve never even held hands or kissed or anything with the man she was so positive I was having the sex with.
For extra full disclosure, in our stories for the paper, we often interview people of multiple views on issues that are a big deal. If people hate those people we interview? The hate tends to get turned toward us.
Anyway, despite the fact that I’m not a looker, this sort of YOU ARE HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH THIS PERSON moment has happened to me multiple times in my life because I am puppy-dog friendly to men and women and—of course—puppies. Also, I am a hugger.
My little hobbit dad was like this too. That’s because he approached people with compassion and empathy. Each person, he would say, had a heart and a story and a hurt, and sometimes a lot of hurts. I’m sure this is how it is with this woman. And with so many of us.
Here’s another quick and related story.
One time after I tried to help a woman out by telling her the system of how to argue a parking ticket in my town, I learned that I was having an affair with the local police chief. Also, very, very far from truth.
Yesterday, I saw someone took a screen shot of a post I made last week (typed out, certain words capitalized) and passed it off as their own. When I asked them about it (super nicely, I promise, because I thought it was funny), they doubled down and said their friends had been posting it for weeks.
I didn’t respond. This woman has enough going on in her life that she doesn’t need to deal with me and a silly post.
However, when I’m not feeling balanced or grounded, I sometimes dwell in these spaces where I wonder how people’s truths can be so terribly far from the actual truth. And how it so often seems when people are wrong, they are so loud and so persuasive about their gossip or their lies.
This isn’t even about politics. It’s just about—kindness.
My dad would get very philosophical on our Sundays driving around together in his little beige Ford Escort. He’d often tell me that people are afraid of the darkness, of the unknown, of change. And sometimes people tell false stories so they can survive guilt or pain in their own lives. Eventually, they sometimes believe in those stories they made up..
“That’s why people are afraid of the dark, Carriekins,” he’s say, which I found really annoying because I hated being called Carriekins. “But the real darkness isn’t in a night sky or a dark cellar, it’s what we embrace inside of us.”
I fell in love with this quote today and it’s what made me think about all of this:
It’s by Li-Young Lee, a poet, who said it during an interview with Tina Chang for the Academy of American Poets.
He thought that each poem was a “descendant of God.” It’s so powerful, really, to think of anything that way, including those ladies who embrace those lies and spread them so hard and so well. We are all a totality of causes. This blog—inspired by past and morning events. This life, this world, our choices. And Lee is right. It is very big and still, it’s embedded inside of each and every one of us.