These are tricky times for most people but joyous and overdue for others. We are a Schizophrenic society.  A good friend suggested creating a sanctuary block where fighting about politics is banned. I was a coward at best, and naive also. She didn’t say it outright, but it seemed apparent to me: Furious at the political hostility and chaos (and cruelty), she said that by refusing to join the call for anger and outrage, I was hiding from it. “I can’t be as nice as you, Jon. I see too many innocent people  being hurt, including many who now admit they were deluded.”

I admit I felt patronized, my feelings dismissed in the very way she was complaining about.

She does not see that this is my way of fighting back: not to argue back but to live a good, honest life that helps as many people as possible.

We all fight in our way. I fight in mine. There are no haters in my Army of Good. There are billions of haters all over the world.  We don’t need any more. I like the side I’m on: when they hate, I love; when they lie, I tell the truth. Hatred has a lot of support.

My friend wrote those remarks after I wrote a piece exploring the boundaries of elitism and its role in America’s divisions and my own life.

I didn’t reach any conclusions about them; they seem beyond me now. She also evoked the Holocaust as a reason for fury and immediate action. I respect her and was stung by her suggestions of naivety and cowardice, but I wasn’t moved by her message any more than the people she was arguing with were open to hers.

“I tried to understand how those people felt and was rewarded with insults by everyone and did not attempt to invite my point of view,” she wrote. I believe it.

I don’t argue politics with anyone on social media, and for years now, I’ve been increasingly involved in spirituality. This has changed my idea of faith and life, making them robust and meaningful. I don’t want to run another website where angry people insult one another and slip into rage, as I fear my friend has and admits she has. There is no shortage of angry people in our country or the world.

Or nice ones.

It is an uncomfortable thing for me, a child of Jewish immigrants,  to think of them getting to America, leaving slaughtered and tortured members of our family behind. I don’t need lessons about the savage abilities of human beings.

I have no quarrels with my friend. She is a good and kind person, but she has made her choice, and I have made mine. My heart is open; I choose love and kindness over anger and hate. That’s my choice. I never tell others what to do or let others tell me what to do.

Recently, I’ve meditated about where I stand and where I am going.  My friend fears genocide.   Genocide is deeply embedded in history and a horrid part of the human experience – the Holocaust, Nuking, Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and Herzegovina,  Cambodia, Mao-se-tung’s Cultural Revolution, Holodomor, the Armenian Genocide, Herroro, and Native Americans.

I got about half of the list. It’s a very real and valid fear.

I’ve read about those dreadful stories for years and felt it was my duty. It’s heartbreaking. We have brought love, hate, beauty, and blood into our world. The stories of those genocides are true, although we want to forget them. However, humanity’s deep and awful flaws and crimes are only part of the story of human beings on earth; they won’t be all of it for me. I’ll choose love. With darkness comes light, and with hatred comes empathy.

Our history can be long and heartbreaking, but I am far from accepting that we are facing an imminent holocaust in America. Of course,  I may be wrong; anyone can be evil, and if so, I will permit myself to acknowledge it and pay the price.

My friend and I are in different places, just like our countries are.

I’m curious, troubled, and often worried, but I’m also determined to live my life my way.  I have the right to be happy. I don’t believe in hatred and argument, which have never worked for me. My friends and others can make their own choices; I will make mine. I don’t judge them, even when and if they judge me. I have the right to choose the course of my life. It’s very much my business.

I am exactly where I wish to be and need to be in my life. I have everything I need and want, and I crave nothing I don’t have. At this moment, I am more stable and grounded than ever. I am deeply involved in life, as I define it, not as anyone else does. My spiritual life is my faith; spirituality has brought me back to life and given me richness beyond my imagination.

In my friend’s turbulent and uncertain world, I am blessed to offer something different than hatred and real: Animals, people, love, a wonderful cat, a grand old hen, nature, landscapes, flower photographs, a place of refuge, safety, and calm. I have good and important work to do, and I am doing it well. I am finding friends who support me and who I am. They don’t urge me to be different.

My life brings me happiness. This is my way of fighting back.