Natasha Fondren

Please don’t misunderstand my last post: my best friend is the strongest, bravest, most courageous, most amazing woman I know. I mean, I wish I could explain it all and tell you why and wax on about her, but her story is not mine to tell. I’ll just say she certainly has not had a perfect life, although I think she’d say it was very blessed in many ways.

As I was saying in a comment to Lauren yesterday, pain is relative. In general, the greatest pain you’ve felt is equal to the greatest pain your neighbor has ever felt. In the retrospect of our own lives, we lose this realization. We think back to the time in grade school when we broke our fingernail, and we compare it to the time we broke our back, and we think the broken fingernail didn’t hurt as much.

But really… they both were equal in that they were the greatest pain we’d ever felt.

When looking around, our tendency is to pick and choose, to say Hah! You think that’s bad? Let me tell you about…

To make matters worse, pain fades in the memory of it. We imagine the time we had crippling, excruciating pain, but no amount of imagination can provide that feeling. In our memory, it doesn’t hurt as bad as it did.

On the other hand, everyone has a breaking point. I mean, broken spirit and everything. (I’m not saying it can’t be healed.) And I think some people have felt that and some haven’t, but even that doesn’t matter, because people think the worst they’ve had it is pretty close to the worst it can get.

In other words, before we’ve felt that snap, we think we’ve been there and survived… but we haven’t.

Just like, we’ve either been to the point of begging for our life or we haven’t. We’ve either had our spirit broken or we haven’t. We try to relate, or sometimes we just can’t imagine it but we think we can. We imagine that we would never beg for our life. But in the end… we’ve either been there or we haven’t.

And we’ve either been to the point of uttering our last prayer with the certainty we were about to die, or we haven’t. There’s no begging then, it’s true.

It sounds like I’ve talked myself out of the argument I meant to make.

I guess in the end, I don’t know.

But I do know this: we can choose to judge or we can choose to respect and understand and be compassionate. Yes, it’s human to blame the victim (like The Secret implies), even when we don’t realize we’re doing it. It’s comforting, because it suggests we have an element of control over things we sometimes don’t have control over.

We do have control over our mind, mostly. But have we all been to the point where we’re hanging on to that last thread of control as the only thread left?

Well, I guess every day, for everyone, is like that, in a way.

So I’m back to I don’t know.

What think you?

“Pets: Please don’t feed stray cats, dogs, or illegal humans.” My new campground rocks. I can’t say enough good things about it. Good people, too. It seems to be the theme of my life that a large percentage of good people have some belief I find indigestible.

But it’s a different culture here. I’m pretty close to the border, and I’d guess that there must be a big border crossing nearby, because I have seen one policeman in a week, and about fifty border patrol cars. I see a border patrol helicopter every day.

In fact, there is a border patrol car parked somewhere along my street 24/7. There are signs all over the clubhouse saying, “Illegal’s, call 1-800-USBP-HELP.” (Yes, illegal’s, not illegals.) There are billboards everywhere.

Immigration is complicated. I don’t believe in closed borders, but I do need to do some open-minded research before I start making public judgments about it. I’d be happy for you to help educate me.

In the meantime, I love this campground rule, not because it gives me indigestion, but because it’s so indicative of how humans can be so cruel and insensitive to each other: they dehumanize them.

I hate this sentence, because seriously? If a fellow human being shows up on my doorstep, dying of thirst and hunger, I’m supposed to show them no more respect or mercy than a stray cat? (And it would be incredibly difficult for me to not feed a stray cat, too.)

I am grateful I live in a gated campground, because I will never have to wrestle with breaking or not breaking the rules. I will obey the laws of my country, of course, but I will pray I am never in a position to have to test that obedience.

If everyone loved someone who was gay, saw them in love with someone else firsthand, I’d bet the votes for same-sex marriage would be closer to 95% to 5%, rather than hovering around 48% to 52%. I’ve talked with people who think gay love is disgusting. I’ve watched their lips curl as they mentally made homosexuals less than human. I’ve said before that all love is beautiful. It is, if only you look.

Likewise, if everyone loved someone who wanted to immigrate to the United States, we’d have open borders. It’s easy to vote against immigration, but how easy is it to vote against Karin Bachmeier, your cousin? Or Juan Garcia, the love of your sister’s life? Geeze, we’re only 200 years old. We’re all immigrants, save many Mexicans and Native Americans.

Did you know that they’ve done studies? Remember Gladiator? Do you know why there was a dog in the opening battle? Because we humans react more emotionally to dogs dying than to humans dying.

We make dogs more than human and humans less than dogs.

Why is it that when it comes to fellow humans, a large majority of us close ourselves off to others? We judge them instead of walk in their shoes. We think of them as no better than strays, rather than drum up some compassion and empathy.

Because, at the end of the day, it’s not that complicated. That person is your brother, your sister, your mother, your lover. Every human is someone with hopes, dreams, and fears. Every human laughs; every human cries. Every human is worthy of respect and love and dignity. Certainly of compassion and understanding.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”