I waited in the car while Maria dropped off some potholders to ship out to people before Christmas.

A friend came over to the window and I asked how she was, and she started crying, she said she was struggling with the ugly politics of our time, feared for our country, and couldn’t sleep or find peace. She asked me how it was that I seemed so at peace and comfortable.

She said she read somewhere that many people were suffering from “Democracy Grief,” and she was one of them.

I was surprised by this statement, as I never think of myself in those ways, nor am I usually described in those ways. People do tell me I have changed, and maybe that is so. I don’t believe people can become different people, I do believe we can do better. I am doing better, I feel it.

It’s too early for me to grieve for democracy.

I think it’s because I am beginning to understand the meaning of truth.

I see the great spiritual challenge in our time is about staying balanced with so much anger and conflict and division swirling all around us.  I told my friend I couldn’t help her, she might need to seek out some professional help, my telling her to feel better would be pointless.

The exchange did get me to thinking though, and what went through my mind is the importance of finding our own truths.

When I watch the conflict raging out of Washington and much of the country every day, I remind myself that there is never one truth, that my truth is never the only truth, there are billions of truths, as many truths as there are people.

The truth is never completely pure, and it is never simple. The people who think differently than I do are just as wedded to the truth as I am. I’d rather understand their idea of truth than condemn them or rage about it or give up my sleep and hope.

Truth is fragile. Mark Twain was right when he said a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

For me, truth is about what I believe, not what everyone else believes. I don’t want to be loved so much as understood, and I want to understand others rather than simply love them or pretend that I can.

I can’t love everyone, and everyone can’t love me. That is a part of radical acceptance.

But I make it a point to understand people rather than to assault or degrade them. I vowed never to speak poorly of my life. What gives me the right to speak poorly of someone else’s life?

The truth does not cease to exist because it is ignored or dismissed, it has its own life and endurance and throughout history truth and love have always prevailed. Both are also always tested.

The truth will set you free, wrote Joe Klass, but it will also piss you and a lot of people off.

Know me for who I wish to be and how I wish to live, don’t ask me about my health or money or political affiliation.

It’s a simple formula for me: the angrier and crueler they get, the more good I try to do. It’s working out for me.

Human beings are not all alike and are perhaps the most gifted and profoundly flawed species on the earth. They seem to be hell-bent on destroying their world and watching it burn. I don’t mean this in a gloomy way, but an honest one.

We are just too much of a broken and greedy mess to come together as one and save the world.

I can’t lie, I don’t see it happening, I accept it.

I don’t judge anyone for being upset at that awful prospect, or the vicious infighting that has come to represent our political leadership.

I do know that for me, a lifetime of fear and anger achieved nothing, accomplished nothing, and left me for dead. So I won’t be crying and sitting up all night over the news.

That’s not going to be the end of the story for me. I soothe myself for remembering that everyone suffers more than I do, everyone lives by their own code, their own truth, on their own path.

I respect that, even if I don’t care for it.

Compassion has become my truth, my medicine, my antidote, my secret wisdom. It was right there all of the time, I just didn’t know it or use it.

To think that I have a lock on truth is simply hubris and arrogance, almost anyone’s truth is as good as mine.