Step down from the bully pulpit

So I sat down before bed Sunday night and wrote a short burst about “write only what you love” and the futility of sinking into the mud time and again. Life is too short, I shouted to the heart of the world.

I slept better that night. I awoke Monday morning rested, or at least more willing and ready to face the world. “I wrote something important last night,” I said to myself, even though I was too bleary-eyed to remember the specifics. I read it back over coffee and said, “Yes. Yes, this is what I’d rather spend time saying. Ray was such a wise man.”

You political types, do you really believe the worst of people, or do you cynically hurl insults at the wall knowing some will stick to your opponent if you fling enough of them? Do you really believe I hate all people of a certain hue so much I must oppress them? Don’t you think it’s simply that we have different ideas about how to love our neighbors and help them succeed? Do you realize that we agree that love, peace and understanding are universal values? I think you do, but being a political animal (and I insult animals by calling you that), you cannot acknowledge our common beliefs — you must not only disagree with me but question my humanity.

That’s why I don’t like to dwell on the political anymore, why I resist the call of my addiction, for, you see, I am a recovering political junkie. Politics appeals to the basest of our instincts, the instinct to force our way of thinking onto others, the instinct to bully. Roosevelt (Teddy) called the highest office a “bully pulpit” and he meant bully in a different sense than is common today, but the description fits: Politicians use their podium to bully the people they consider common, those they call “my people” or “my constituents” as if they can own human beings and impose their will. I reject the political; when I share my opinions, it is in a spirit of love so that you will understand, not in hate and spite so that you are demeaned and bullied into accepting that which you may not believe.

And here I am rambling about politics when I’ve just embraced “Write what you love, and love what you write.” I guess I just felt a need to explain why I don’t cry from the mountaintops, “The emperor has no clothes! No bullies! No hate!” every day. I guess I just need to repeat if we’d just love our neighbors we wouldn’t need all this political fuss.

Where angels dance

“Write only what you love, and love what you write,” Ray Bradbury wrote.

What would be the point of writing words of hate, or words that don’t speak love, no, shout love? What would be the point of wasting any moment of life on the mean, the small, the spirit-breaking nastiness?

Given a finite time to have any impact on this universe, spend every minute in love, in spirit-lifting, on big ideas, on generosity, on making every moment count for something positive.

Do you see why I do not write of politics if I can avoid it? Oh, I stumble sometimes and snap back at nasty minds, and I point out foolishness when instead I should laugh and turn another cheek, but in my most free moments I soar in love and remember those who lifted me, not those who dragged me into mud to wrestle with demons.

Angels walk among us (most of them on four loving paws), and I love to write about those angels and victory over those demons.

When I write what I love, it’s easier to stay in the glow of that love and dismiss the baser senses, and it’s easier to rest at night knowing I reached for stars where angels dance.

How can I hold onto this thought and speak or write only in love? That may be the biggest challenge of a life — or indeed, of an age.

The affair of the fedora

The fedora had sat untouched at that jaunty angle for months. Did it miss my head? Was it forlorn and feeling forgotten? Would it ever move again?

All of these thoughts would be rushing through its head, if it only had a head. But fedoras being fedoras, it needed someone else’s head to be complete.

I picked it up and settled it on my head.

Sure enough, it whispered, “You complete me.”

“I hear the voice of a fedora,” I said. “Yes, I have passed through the zippy door into insanity.”

Here, in this silly space, I am comforted to learn that insanity doesn’t make me dangerous — only detached from reality. As such, I am a perfect citizen, compliant and oblivious.

“Are you insane?!” an old friend cried. Why, yes, yes, I am. Just ask my fedora.

The insane, in fact, have conquered the world. That makes more sense than any other conspiracy theory.