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2004-11-11 - 9:29 a.m.

This is not an entry I expected to write today (so I hope that later today, another one will follow), but this is something I wrote in response to something written by one of the more vocal gay writers on a board that I participate on from time to time, who feels that with the results of the recent election and the reason for voting for Bush that was given by twenty percent of those who voted Republican, that we have now entered a season of a more obvious gay demonization followed by a loss of all rights for gays, after which the concentration camps and exterminations can not be far behind.

While I do not agree with his position (particularly since those people were speaking of the special issue of gay marriage, not gays as a whole, and I do not utilize rejection of that one issue as a benchmark of people's entire attitude toward gays), I understand the reasons for his pain and his fear and for what seems like his giving up whatever was left of his hope.

I do not share his negative view, but I also understand that in that, I could be accused of being naive and eternally falsely optimistic in the face of clear and present dangers.

But I do not consider optimism to be naive, nor do I believe keeping my eyes wide open for a tiny spark of light at the end of a long tunnel or a thread of silver lining buried deep in a dark cloud to be signs of ignorance or stupidity.

As the marvelous Viktor Frankl wrote in Man's Search For Meaning, the one thing that every person can hold onto is that ultimately, we all can still choose our own way to handle relentless adversity.

This is the way that I choose:

Well, buffguy, you definitely well-presented a point of view that must be shown and said some things that must be said. And, of course, your worst negative projections could come true and all we would have left would be our quiet dignity as we are led to our deaths like six million people in Nazi Germany, or ten million in Stalinist Russia, or an untold number of millions in Pol Pot's Cambodia, or another six million women burned as witches throughout middle ages Europe, or virtually every Native American who once thrived on this North American continent, or a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis recently killed, paid for by our tax dollars to the profit of the very demons whom you fear so much (P.S., did you know that Bush Senior's father raised money for Hitler?). Maybe this is the never-ending story of the planet Earth, known as the "Dark Planet" in much spiritual literature, and the only hope that we can find is that we are all playing parts in some dark educational drama and then once it is over, we will emerge awake in a higher world which has been our true home the whole time. Then we can find rest and ease, until we choose another adventure.

We do not really know what it is all about and where it will all lead. We can only know how to play our individual parts.

Genuine evil in the world exists and wreaks its havoc on more than us; we are just, perhaps, one particular identifiable group that has banded together for some measure of mutual comfort. But we are not the world's only victims of unreasonable pain and suffering. What of abused children, bruised and bleeding, afraid to even cry as they cower, silent, in dark, fearful corners in houses that offer no haven? What of a child with leukemia, bald-headed and stuck with needles, separated from his or her brothers and sisters, lanquishing in a sterile hospital ward? What of the woman who is told that she must suffer the radical removal of both of her breasts due to an unstoppable cancer, or those people who have facially-disfiguring cancers, the surgery for which slowly turns them into looking (externally) like monsters? What of any aging person, all-too-soon watching in their mirror their shining youthful beauty receding deep into an ever-increasing bloat and a sea of sags and wrinkles and graying? What of mothers who work three jobs to help their babies survive in a violent ghetto, only to have them riddled by bullets in a drive-by-shooting? What of parents who watch their athletic-champion teens be sent off to fight an insane war, only to come home hidden from the media in flag-draped caskets, or paralyzed or missing key body parts, or their sperm infected by the dust of "depleted" uranium particles quietly spreading within the body its nuclear radiation, turning their future babies into faceless or skinless nightmares?

I could go on and on and on about this, moving it on beyond the human to the suffering of animals (vivisection, factory farms) and even the entire planet (clear-cutting forests, polluting the oceans and sky), and so much more, but ultimately the only position that one can have is to sign up and be a recruit for the cause of COMPASSION, that 'though you may be hurting, wherever you see suffering that you can help alleviate, if only for just a moment, you will do so, and ultimately you place all your focus outward and you forget about yourself so much and worry about all the others, and due to some benevolent agency, even people whose suffering in either actuality or potentiality is so much worse than ours managed this outward focus and are uplifted to joyfulness by it and we can follow their example.

Yes, we are hurting, but we are not alone in that hurting and in this we join all other living beings and somehow in our mutual caring and response with love, we will come together and whatever our differences are will become insignificant in the face of our similarities.

Yes we are gay, but that is not all we are, and ultimately, that particular definition becomes meaningless in the face of our universality. Ultimately, we are beings of love, that's all, except that it is not something small, it is something that is everything, and really, the only thing that truly matters.

I do not expect, or even plan for, the worst; all that I can expect and plan for is the best, the best that is in and of me.

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