Janet, a longtime blog reader, sent me this quote from her spiritual reading this morning, and she said she thought of me. I am grateful for the quote and for her thoughtfulness. It has much more meaning than messages telling me how cruel I am for not letting Zip into the house every night.

I get a lot of nice ones.

The quote is from Abba Anthony, a Desert Father:

“A time is coming when men will go mad; they will attack him saying “You are mad; you are not like us.”

The messages I receive are a fascinating part of my new life as a different kind of writer – a virtual,  blogging one. They have made me strong, taught me how to fend off bullies and intruders, honed my sarcasm,  inflated my notion of self, and helped me understand that the truth is that I am crazier and saner than many others.

They taught me that the only way to thrive is to be fiercely independent.

In my 40 years as a book writer, I never got cruel or hostile messages; even the nasty reviews were pretty civil. I am coming to understand that the angry and broken people on social media can be a valuable lesson in my growing fascination with the idea of a Revolution Of Compassion, for which I would be happy to volunteer as a soldier.

(Photo: Maria’s hay twine sculpture).

The quote above from St. Anthony speaks a lot to the outsiders and those who think for themselves rather than paste labels onto their brainwashed foreheads and into their brains.

I’m never sure who is mad or sane when I see the news. Sometimes, we get it backward. The sane ones are never heard from. They are too rational.

It also reflects something I think about. In America, we have forgotten how to talk to one another without being cruel, dismissive, or angry. If we don’t find a way to resolve this and do better – this pandemic is tearing up the country – then the government will pay dearly. I’m going to try to do my part; I won’t tell others what to do.

I am one of those people who rarely fits into any gathering around me. I have ideas about it, but they aren’t necessarily something I want to write about anymore. I’m living now, and I like it here.

Janet was right; this quote about madness had meaning and relevance for me. I am not like most other men, for better or worse, and people accuse me of madness all the time.

One controversial Greek philosopher said that everything anyone said about him was true – to them.

I don’t feel sorry for myself, but people have attacked me all my life for not being like them. That interaction is all over the news, even all over our Congress. Millions of people have experienced it; we fought a bloody Civil War.

It gets confusing because I believe anyone who calls a stranger a lousy name online is unbalanced. I can’t imagine doing that to a friend or a stranger. I’m happy being sarcastic sometimes but never wish to be rude.

Some of the messages inspire me to think and write about this subject – how to talk with people who don’t wish to speak to me.

Some have tapped into my anger and insanity, and I am learning to recognize that. The trick is learning to talk quietly and honestly to people and judge or argue with them as little as possible. I don’t know how to do that; I often resort to snarkiness or ridicule; trying to talk with hateful people may be beyond me.

That’s who I am.

But if I somehow manage to use this hostility and learn from it, that would be a great gift. I’m getting there. If others did it, that might be a miracle. I sincerely believe in a spiritual life, even when I stumble. It’s another step in my spiritual work.

Hana sent me this message yesterday:

“Jon, who does it remind you of when you strike out at everyone who doesn’t sing your praises and agree with everything you do? Such as calling whoever the person was who reported you for freezing the cat deranged? It sounded like DJT calling Jack Smith deranged…for upholding the law…
There are a lot of similarities there….I, for one, only read your blog hoping to find that you have finally got your due…just a matter of time…”

What is the Jon in your message to think of you, Hana? Calling each other names is appealing but pointless, really, and inhuman. If we can’t talk decently to one another, we can’t talk at all. That is what is happening all over the country.

I can delete Hana,  as many suggest, or ignore her, which has always been my first choice. Or dislike her, as she says she does me. I’m looking for the middle.

What is she saying, if anything,  that I need to know or respond to? Or I could pause on the busy train for a second and try to hear what she is attempting to say to me which seems to be she is praying for me to get what I deserve.

Could I ever listen to her? Not yet, but I can try. She starts badly by lying about Zip; he is cosseted and loved every hour of the day and has never been “freezing.” But perhaps she doesn’t know she is lying. Maybe she believes what some zealot told her?

I won’t argue about Zip with her; it’s not her business, and I don’t argue online with strangers. But I don’t have to get angry back. Perhaps there is a way to talk with her in a sane way? Maybe I don’t have time or the heart to try.

Here is someone who reads me faithfully but needs a cover to explain it,  reading only in the hope that I will finally “get my due,” and she will see it. This is a fuzzy thing to imagine, a suggestion anyone can imagine. I can assume it wouldn’t be a loving “due,” but I am 76, so she might want to read the blog carefully and regularly.

Could both sides of these escalating micro-conflicts be correct? Honestly, I’m not sure. We all think that we are sane and that people we don’t like are the crazy ones. And that’s what they think of us.

Then I was diagnosed as being mentally ill (extreme anxiety) and began to see that terms like “deranged,” “mad,” and “crazy” in a different way no longer have any real meaning in our culture; they are mainly used as yet another way of labeling people who are different.

But the sometimes hostile e-mail has been good for me; it made me stronger and more confident, and I learned through some of my messages what it means to be crazy. It helps me pursue my attachment theory research and feeds my secret hobby as an anthropologist.

I am different, and I am happy to be different. “...they will attack him, saying he is not like us.”

In the past year, I’ve made a great leap from arguing with people I think are crazy (or who think I am crazy) to learning something from them, every one. In one sense, we are connected. I want to put this discomfort to good use and transform it into something worthwhile.

Like so many of you, I am weary of the argument cruelty, and insults in our public lives. I want something better. It’s not about being liberal or conservative. To me, it’s about being human. The old monk said we all come from the same heart.

To those people, I am crazy in the cruelest way – I don’t do what they say. And they are crazy to me in the only way they seem able to communicate – the most insulting and vicious way. This is a national disease as severe and dangerous as Covid-19. There is no vaccine.

I’m also learning and seeing that these cruel words have lost their meaning. Truth doesn’t seem to apply. Everyone is everything everyone wants them to be, from one moment to another. No one is willing to admit being wrong, or even changing their minds. No name is too cruel to not be used on others.

They each have something to say; they are human, and as a writer and a human being, they have given me a lot to think about.

They helped get me to a good place.

And the delete button is one of my best friends in this brave and chaotic new world. I can use it with one hand and try to make some gentler contact with the other.