When I noticed the email from Wendy, I was livid. How could she dare to violate my private email box and think that we had anything to talk about. I deleted it.
After a long time had gone by and I'd done everything else, I changed my mind. When no one was looking, I read what she had to say. I got angry all over again, but I decided to answer.
We both took a no-holds-barred approach, discussing old and ugly disputes. I asked her how she could so profoundly label someone she didn't even know. She asked ME how could *I* so profoundly label someone *I* didn't know. Sensing that checkmate was one move away, she seized the moment: "You're a hypocrite." It was a very bitter pill, but one I was forced to swallow.
Being the proud know-it-all I can be, her simple but powerful truth made me angry, but I had to shake my head and laugh. "Damn! She's right," I muttered under my breath. Weaseling around it, trying to justify what was clearly my error (even for a wordy guy like me) was impossible. What I had often accused others of was also true of me. It was like when the family pet shits in the middle of the living room -- not pretty, foul smelling, but there it is. NOW what are ya gonna do?
Finding myself off balance -- and worse, outgunned -- I told her I didn't like the direction the conversation was taking. "Okay, so maybe you have a point, Wendy. Happy now?" Once I saw the fatal flaw in one of the cornerstones of my opinion, I was ready to listen more fully to her opposing views on every matter. I had taken a glimpse into the mirror and didn't like what I saw. The mental connection with an important truth had been made. By then, understanding, reconciliation, peace, even friendship was merely a few paragraphs away.
***********
Connected in a way was another event that I had. Last week saw a bit of another reconciliation for me with my very inactive but JW loyalist kid sister. She is blessed (cursed?) with a similar mix of qualities like the rest of her siblings -- likes to read; loves real truth; she's not a bullshitter. That's a dangerous combination when you are loyal to the Society but have an older brother that sends stuff like the Wt's UN fiasco, ahem... "must've clicked on your addy by mistake. Sorry." Without making a single comment on it, I sent her the web page that briefly explains the whole mess.
"Why are you always so negative about the Society?" She harshly vented about other matters unrelated to the organization, but because of it I'm certain. We went days without a word, unlike us since we generally share several emails daily. (Oh, I forgot to say that we can both be very stubborn... bet none of you knew THAT.) I decided to break the ice when I forwarded a joke about an ad for single Taliban women, all wearing veils. Soon after, she sent me this, saying that when she read it she thought of me:
A mind stretched by a new idea never returns to it's original dimension. -- Abraham Lincoln
I told her that I thought everyone was like that. Sometimes, though, new ideas are so profound they boggle the mind and people refuse to accept the possibility that they just may be true. Rather than go through the mental effort of toying with the new idea, they recoil to the mentally safer place of the familiar, rejecting the new idea all together. Our mother takes perverse pride in being like that, as are many dubs.
Then too, new truths make people face the painful reality that they are imperfect, mistake-prone human beings, so continuing to believe old truths is much easier.
***********
One last thing.
A group of people on my job and I were talking about current events: the WTC, Bush and bin Laden. Amy said that she supported the President 100%. I told her I wasn't so sure. I love America, think this is the best country in the history of mankind, but Bush may be disregarding a possible solution, being unwilling to talk but rather trying to settle the dispute with force. To lead the nation down a course of diplomacy after such an attack would have certainly guaranteed him a single term (if he made it that far), but it may have been the absolute right thing to do. It's what I believe.
Despite that belief, a belief that talking out grievances is always the best way, I told Wendy that I was happy that she contacted me since I would never have done the same. Yeah, it was hypocritical, but swallowing that particular pill was a little easier...
... the second time around.
Peace