“But you don’t believe in God,” Sherman laughs, coming over to me and turning-down the left side of my collar. We are getting ready to go to another community event that his family is putting on. “This is all so easy for you.”
He’s joking. He knows the truth of my world. He knows the popular, and easy, perception to make by those who don’t. He knows the difference. I’ll play along though, if only to dance this holiday tradition with him. Plus, I don’t have to wear the sweater his aunt gave him.
“But I do believe in god,” I say, as balanced and calmly as I might. “I just don’t see her, or him or it in the heavens like most people. I believe that there is a piece of that god, whatever it looks like, inside of every living thing: every person; every animal. That is what I have always believed. Before I knew there was a name for that belief, or that other people held it as well. Most people don’t get that. They think I am trying to be trendy, I think.”
“They clearly don’t know you, or see your wardrobe,” Sherman scoffs. He’s right. I am an appallingly bad dresser. If trends had any merit at all to me, I would take offence to what I wear, daily. “Besides, it isn’t trendy to be Jainist. Almost no one even knows what that means.”
Again, he’s right. He usually is. Thank goodness too, because I am usually wrong. However, I think it is my beliefs that have helped give so much of my world meaning to me even when it had no meaning, or merit, to anyone else around me. It helped me appreciate that the truths of others was always as credible as my own, even if we don’t understand each other’s rationales. I always assumed that if we have a part of the same god inside of us, then we are equal: nothing more and nothing less. That helped me love my family when they struggled to love me back. It helped see love myself in the face of a world that told me I shouldn’t. It helped me believe that while I might not be right, I might not be wrong either.
“But, when you come to a dinner like this one tonight, how do you feel?” Sherman continues, interrupting my inner monologue, which must have seemed like I had forgotten how to speak from the outside. There might be a few ways to look at this. Jains don’t congregate or read from a communal holy book. I think the theory is that you have to find the meaning in and for yourself. That way you know it is your truth. You can neither credit nor annex authority of your ideas or actions to a higher power.
“I love it,” I say, a tear swelling in my left eye. “Nothing could make me happier than being with the people I love the most and experiencing their truths—their comforts—with them. That’s unconditional love, no?”
Sherman shrugs his arms, but he also nods. I must seem so strange to him. That he has fallen in love with me anyway makes me care for him even more.
“And that, I think, is the thing at the heart of all beliefs,” I say, choosing to let the tear travel the length of my face and tying Sherman’s tie instead. “Love each other without either hate or mistreatment. If we all did that; if any of us could really practice that, well, I think that would be something. We’re all just trying to do that. We try and we fail and we try again. No?”
“But you get attacked,” Sherman counters with a vigorous knowingness I forget he has sometimes. He always seems so assured of himself that it is easy to forget he has endured a lot too. “Tonight people will get angry and frustrated with you for not believing along with them. They’ll yell. They’ll get louder and faster.”
It’s true. But, it is also the reaction of every side. It is the reaction of each of us. Especially when grasping for the last slice of cheesecake, whether that is literal or figurative. Personally, I like to think that I jump faster for the literal, but no one is a very accurate self-arbitrator.
“I just try to remember that talking faster and louder do not make anyone more right,” I smile cheekishly, turning to Sherman and rubbing his back. “Getting faster and louder has never made anyone more right. Actually, I think it shows how far from right we all are most of the time.”
“Meaning?” he asks, as his eyes start to dance with a spark of the light I have come so accustomed to seeing in them. It’s something that sets my heart at ease. Now that I’ve found this comfort it is hard to believe I existed without it for so long.
“I mean that getting faster and louder is usually what we do when we’re afraid,” I continue. “Afraid we’re wrong; afraid someone else—anyone else—is right, more right, maybe more right; afraid the foundations we’ve built our lives around—the same ones we have used to judge friends and hate strangers—isn’t quite as right as we thought it was a second ago. That it never will be again.”
"Okay," Sherman agrees, tentatively anyway. What I have said is part of a substantive argument, but it's only part. It's theoretical and an easy thing to mouth without practicing. It's something I can say while inhaling the same breath I'll use to scream. I consider this for a second, while chewing on my lower lip in a way I am sure is less seductive than when I see female leads pulling it off on film.
"I think there is a lot less acclaim for a more contemplative, willingly discoursive..."
"You mean willing to have a discourse," he corrects me.
"Right," I smile, unaffected. "Way of interacting with the world--the people--around us that far more rewarding than this defensive, hostile stance we take most of the time. Maybe all of the time."
"What do you mean?" Sherman asks, suddenly entirely involved in this conversation, with a passion and quiet confidence I know and trust in him.
"I mean that when we trust the reasons we think the way we do we aren't troubled to question them and to let others question them. We aren't afraid of the prospect of eventually—not wantonly—seeing parts of the world in a different way. We don't box ourselves into the way we have been conditioned or trained to see the world. I think that takes courage and intelligence and respect for different points of view," I say, before shrugging. "I think that is often brushed off by the fat, loud, talkers as weakness or hesitance. But I think that type of honest contemplation in interactions is what lets us move those mountains inside of us and sometimes, allow what start out as very much other people—in self-construct, perception and global frameworks—to become a part of our world. Maybe even a part of ourselves."
“I like that,” Sherman smiles lovingly, as he blows his nose and puts the frenetic sweater on that his aunt made him and requests to see at every family gathering. Neither of us would have chosen this sweater, but I love that Sherman wears it for her. It’s an unaffecting compromise in that it neither hurts, nor changes, his world to wear it; yet, it seems to bring a peaceful reassurance to her. Watching her, you can visibly see tension lift from her face when she sees him walk in the room with it on. As though its presence marks her place in the world as she has come to know it.
I wonder how our world would be—could be—if we lived our lives that way, wearing such sweaters. If we honestly only took issue with the things that affect us in real ways instead of distracting ourselves with things that will never affect us, but are simply different, and thus, scary or fearful to us.
Then Sherman does something he never has before. He comes over to me and lifts one side of my collar. "One up, one down; just the way you like it."
No comments:
Post a Comment