Asking

Do NOT assume you know my exact meaning or intent when I claim infinite need for the cookie equivalent of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Do NOT assume you’ve intuited some magic, underlying, critical message when I’ve tossed off Thích Nhất Hạnh or Dick Gregory quotes (subtext -- not necessarily what’s for breakfast). Do NOT assume you know my precise beliefs, or lack thereof, in a god or a religious doctrine. Do NOT assume you know my exact political beliefs.

Just don’t!

Got it?

Instead, if you really want to know, ASK me where I stand on the whole god thing and if I want to hear more of your religious beliefs. ASK me, do I really exist just for the slimmest, whispered taste of that platonic ideal of sugary, baked goodness. ASK me if I’d intended to dictate to you which emotions you should and should not experience, when I excerpted that famous pacifist’s words (also too -- read the quote again. For understanding this time). ASK me for my specific thoughts on particular proposed bills, candidates and/or events of the day.

The answers may or may not surprise you but, if you inquire versus assume, you’ll know how I actually feel/believe. You do yourself and me a great injustice by littering the often, already monstrously difficult field of communication with wholly unnecessary, emotional land mines.

I get it, a lot of us have a fair amount of backed up anger. We’re all, at least on occasion, volcanoes of rage and dissatisfaction, ready to go all meth fueled Vesuvius. I know. Seriously, I grok that. Been there, done that, still wicked embarrassed about my bad behavior, my misapplied indignation and ire.

None of us has ever achieved a damned thing, beyond the venting of spleen, when we bark, condescend and snipe like mad dogs in the soaking rains, at folks who we otherwise call ‘friend.’

I’m not the fight you are are looking for.

Oh wait, there IS something successfully brought off -- distrust. I am now utterly wary of a few who I’d previously thought of, more or less, warmly.

Song for the Asking -- Simon and Garfunkle