Luxurious Air, Decadent Water
Recently (as I mentioned in our last newsletter), I was without heat in my house for five days because my furnace malfunctioned. But the silver lining was that the repair person, for some reason, checked the air filters in my house and they were filthy. I hadn’t replaced them in well over a year. They’re supposed to be replaced every few months. So I replaced them, and now the air that flows through my vents is much fresher.
A few days ago, a friend poured himself a little water from my Brita-filtered pitcher and happened to ask how long it had been since I’d last changed that water filter. I had no idea really. “Some months,” I guessed. “Maybe four.”
The next day I noticed (finally!) that my drinking water wasn’t tasting all that great and I changed the filter. Wow! Huge difference!
So now, thanks to that repair person and that friend, I’m breathing better air and drinking cleaner water in my house. That’s pretty important – air and water.
Why hadn’t I switched out those filters sooner? Am I really that absent-minded? I don’t think so. I’m generally not absent-minded at all. I don’t lose things. I have a good memory. I keep track of details.
I think there was a subconscious reason I’d neglected to change my air and water filters.
In each case, in vouchsafing myself a less polluted lifestyle, I had to simultaneously create more pollution – that is, more garbage.
I once got on the phone to the Portland waste disposal and recycling office and spoke to a very pleasant person who informed me, regretfully, that there was really no way to recycle the thick plastic casing of my water filters.
And I simply assume that there is nothing recyclable about my air filters either; I can pretty much tell that just by looking at them.
Each spent air filter is a large piece of garbage that ends up in landfill, and used water filters are also dense in their wastey nature.
So the irony inflames my subconscious guilt. What kind of luxury is this? Contributing to the despoiling of my planetary environment — in my own miniscule teardrop-in-the-ocean way — in order to preserve the purity of this tiny bubble I’m so privileged to live in – this house.
My godson calls my house “a simple, humble home.” A former friend, less kind to me in his heart, referred to it as a “castle” and as “Marc’s empire.” That was mean. It’s actually not a very big house at all, but it’s all my own, and I love it, and it even has a little guestroom which has enabled me to comfortably host many friends from out of town.
Do I deserve (whatever “deserve” means) this much comfort in a world of unfathomable deprivation and suffering and impending disaster? How complicit am I in destroying the world to come?
(Note: My godson gifted me with the following affirmation, which I have posted on my fridge, because it helps me feel better: “Life is holding me. There is more than enough. I’m entirely deserving.”)
Pleading Innocent
Speaking of complicity, a Palestinian activist in my community recently made the following statement on a public group thread: “I believe it is imperative that we all loudly and vocally show our support for Palestine and not to do so is privilege and complicity in genocide.”
To be clear, I abhor the Gazan War and see no justification for it whatsoever. It’s a compounding atrocity. But I also support the existence of the state of Israel, which, according to my understanding, makes me a Zionist, and I therefore cannot honorably participate in any of the “anti-Zionist” demonstrations popping up in the vicinity.
For the record, I do not feel “complicit in genocide” by virtue of my Zionism, though having that epithet directed at me certainly hurts. I get it; there’s excruciating pain right now in Gaza. I get it: there are people right here in Portland who have friends and family there. I get it; you want me to feel your pain and by my not entirely feeling your pain, not feeling the depth of pain you do, I am in some sense – according to your view – aligned with the perpetrators.
If it makes you feel any better, that hurts.
I don’t believe it though. I am not aligned (or allied) with your perpetrators.
Complicity in War
However (still speaking. in my mind, just for one more sentence, to the pro-Palestine activists), maybe there is actually a deeper grain of truth to what you’re saying, one that applies to you as well.
In a world as desperate for healing as ours, perhaps we are all “complicit in genocide” whenever we allow ourselves to hate, or to “hate back,” or act from petty emotions and ego defenses in ways that deliberately cause each other pain.
I am complicit in war whenever I fail to forgive minor slights, and when I act or speak from vindictiveness instead of feeling my heart.
Every time we forgo the opportunity to choose love and forgiveness for ourselves and others, we are complicit in the Great War; we are in thrall to the God of Revenge.
Complicity in Privilege
And when we imagine we can “get away with” being mean in various little (and sometimes big) ways because we don’t see how it can come back to haunt us, then I would say we are complicit in privilege. That is, the privilege we unthinkingly assume is ours. But we are deluding ourselves, because no one is ultimately insulated from the outside world, or from others’ pain, or from the consequences of their own deeds and words.
Here is an example.
I believe that the popularity of Donald Trump is one expression, one symptom of the fact that there is a world of hurt out there.
I have had numerous conversations with friends in which we share our bewildered astonishment: Don’t people see Trump for who he is, and that he threatens the very foundations of our republic? Are they crazy? Do they just want to throw away our democracy?
But even that feeling signifies privilege because it means that, at least on some level, we perceive democracy to be working for us, benefitting us. We feel that, to some extent at least, the “system” protects us and we perceive ourselves to be enjoying the blessings of freedom.
Can we get our heads around the fact that we have reached a point where, as a nation, a critical mass or people don’t feel that way?
And do we look down at them for not “realizing” what they’re willing to toss away so carelessly?
I confess to having had that judgment. This too, I call complicity in privilege.
And I forgive myself for it.
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