Letting go

First, let it go.  This is the first piece of advice and something you will never truly learn.  You were correct but it didn’t matter because you acted all wrong.  You remembered the facts perfectly and the thing that they said was odd and didn’t make any sense but let it go.  Nobody cares except you and the person you’re arguing with.  You seem like an asshole.  More so because you’re right.  Worse for your mind if you’re not but worse for your friends if you are.  Let it go.  You don’t really care.  What you care about is people.  People are special, your opinions are… lacking.  You need them and they don’t need you.  Let it go.

            Firstly, objective truths are never as objective as you’d hoped.  they always end up wrong anyways.  Approximations are never objectively correct though they try for objective truths.  Let’s take Newtonian Physics.  You might be the type to have adamantly defended them against people.  Against people who believe that the center of the universe is god and god wants things to fall down and so God, not gravity, GOD causes things to fall.  Seems insane to you.  And you, while explaining Newtonian Physics, become excited.  Your voice rises in pitch.  You become louder and louder.  All this happens without your awareness but the person you’re speaking to notices and is… frightened… intimidated, if you’re lucky, and you don’t notice.  Then suddenly and without warning,  they turn away.  They pull away.  An immeasurable distance forms between you

 and them.

You feel so completely Alone.

Almost offended

certainly afraid

you’ve been here before.

Do you really hate them?

Certainly, in that moment you do. 

For me, I’ve found, that I will

always forever

immutable gap.

Apologize.  You may not have been wrong but

You behaved poorly

You behaved like a child

Now, you’re even more adamant about defending yourself.

Protecting with logic.

Armor of Objectivity

Let it go.  It doesn’t matter.  You will not change the way they think about things.  If you want to change people’s opinions go into Art or Research.  That is the only way.  Either change a society that dictates truth or change the masses minds.  Either way your conversation can change nothing.  If that person specifically needs changing then let it go.  If you must change their minds. 

AND ONLY IF YOU MUST.

you can do it through caring and love.

You must bridge the immutable gap and connect.

You must connect to them and love them completely. 

You must know what it is that led them to their decision and why.

You must feel the way they feel.

Exactly the way they feel

Accept why they’ve done what they’ve done and

and I’ve no idea but you’ll be a different person for it.

Probably a better person for it, though I offer no promises.

Right, You’ve tried.  You wanted to love them but they didn’t love you.  It left you feeling alone.  You wanted to connect to them.  As perfectly as you could.  You felt your chest pull forward and you watched them pull away.  What did you do wrong then?  Nothing.  That is the sad bitter truth of reality.  I guess if you’re hung up on that I’d recommend reading about Soren Keikegaard’s Life.  He was, arguably ( possibly in my opinion) , the founder of existentialism.  He wanted desperately to be true to himself and Christianity but his belief was that one needed to take a “Leap of Faith” to believe in God.  That there was no objective way to decipher god’s existence and therefore one must make a leap of faith to believe in god.  Despite this he believed in god.  Despite being exiled from the church he believed in god.  And despite being rejected by the love of his life, who married someone in better economic standing( for better or worse),  he choose to continue to love her and believe in god.  Not because it would benefit him but because he believed outside of himself that it would be…

I guess it is at this point that I should say I’m an atheist and I can’t really say why he decided to believe what he did or do what he did.

For me, it has value because I don’t really believe in anything.  I try to find any value I can in anything. 

I remember how, as a child, I was told that people who live there life this way are destroyed.

In high school I discovered Sartre.  Sartre got me through the chaos of highschool.  By middle school I had given up on the religion that was being taught by the Lutheran Minister who “confirmed” me(in the Christian faith).  I still felt I needed to learn more.  Needed to believe in something.

My parents told me about people who “followed Sartre’s teaching”.  These supposed Existentialists who, always, ended up sad and alone.  Had they seen these people’s lives.  80 or 60 or even 30 years of experience they pretended to have seen every moment of.

Like the other day when my father told me my aunts were just terrified of death because they’re atheists and how they’re just getting their just desserts for making fun of old people for dying when they were young.

And then when I mentioned it to my mother and she told me how he was really referring to his parents.  She knew this because earlier that day they had a conversation about how his parents had made fun of people who were getting old and how his parents had not believed in god but then they died afraid and alone. 

Like we all do.

This all connecting to his grandparents, my great grandparents, who had converted to Christianity.  You see, my father has always believed in his grandparents and since they believed in Christianity, he would believe in their god. 

But it wasn’t their god.  More precisely it wasn’t their gods because they could never stop themselves from believing in what we now call “Norse Mythology”

Valhalla and all. 

And I only know this from the information that I’ve compiled from all the million stories I’ve heard of them.

Even my grandparents, his parents,

specifically his father could never truly let it go.

A story about a severed thumb for another time.

Context is an everexpandingbastard.

Well, who’s the father?

it’d take a lifetime to explain.

SO,

let it go.

People will tell you that you were in the right when you explain it

but let it go.

Don’t explain it.

Apologize.

or if you’d rather, spend the rest of your life obsessing over it and explaining it and defining it and exploring it.  There’s nothing wrong with devoting your life to the pursuit of understanding.

If it isn’t worth that

Let it go

and

you probably should apologize.