Only connect

When Israel and [name anArab entity here] start going at it, we all get panicky; it seems reasonable to do so. There is so much grim determination on one side, and so much hysteria and irrationality on the other, that we can't imagine any possible non-violent way out of it. And sooner or later, somebody we know personally, or maybe even we our own se'f, is going to have to get into it. Death, and lots of it, is going to come around and demand some red meat, right here in our home town, all because of something that we can't even see, much less control or even restrain.

Already death itself is being used as a tactical, even strategic weapon; we count up the number of daily deaths in Iraq, we compute it by the month and year, we subdivide it endlessly: what's the civilian count? the number of American kids lost? how many suicide bombers this week, and how many did each take out? And now we're doing the same kind of ticking off in the current Hezbollah vs. Israel skirmish. We're told that in Arab Islamist circles, Hezbollah has good street cred because it's been able to keep parity with the number of casualties it inflicts on Israelis, in proportion to the number of casualties it sustains on its own side. It also gets extra points, along with al Quaeda, for the most grisly type of killing -- beheadings are particularly enhancing to the terrorist's rep.

Death is interesting, it's worth parsing and writing down and publishing everywhere, as if it were not already written into the script of everyone's life. Everybody will die; it is a truth that affects the way most people live, however we deny it. There is a social fascination with the manner of dying, or with the number at any one time, but four people die of old age for every one spectacular death, and who makes note of this? Who grieves for them? Just the ones who know them personally, and even then many are grateful for the life more than they grieve the death. There is a reason for every life, beginning to end, but to accept, ACCEPT, death, to live with it, requires a completely different experience of grief and loss.

It is then a question of importance, isn’t it? Like: how is the life well-lived more significant than the honorable death? How is one well-connected life more significant than reading of these anonymous but sensational deaths?

It makes all the difference to bring these ideas home, to make a connection to the dying one, to our own death, to death itself. By forging that bond, we give meaning and strength to our lives. A well-connected life lives far beyond itself. Everything we touch is changed. Whatever life's wounds, they are healed. Whatever its griefs, they are reconciled. Whatever its grudges or fears or pain, they are salved by the experience of solid connection, and it is only in some part that we do so intentionally. It is the result perhaps of an intentionally connected life, but we do not have to intend to heal or reconcile or entertain; you only connect, and these are the result.

The means of making connection is actually pretty easy: just love, as hard as we can. We don't have to like it, but we do have to accept everything around us -- that's love: acceptance. It's easy, really, once we get the demons of Principal or Pride or Ego or Fear out of the way. THAT'S the hard part, and the combining of thousands of ego-driven maniacs into one hare-brained Cause makes for a great deal of noise and disruption, not to say confusion of issues.

Let's not give in to the silky seduction of panic; we can't think or connect while in a panic, and in fact we don't have to try. We are all Leopold Blooms in the face of worldwide horror ("I'm hysterical! I'm in pain and I'm hysterical! I'm wet, and I'm in pain and I'm hysterical!"). The reports of increasingly bad news gives us a good excuse not to risk making and maintaining our direct connections. Our personal connections are a greater threat to the ego than a hundred bus-bombings five thousand miles away, and so we're tempted to seize any excuse not to address them -- way too scary. Let's go see "Jaws" instead of staying home and engaging with people we love, and who challenge us far more than does a movie or a war.

International strife is big, big, big, but it isn't real. We learned three years ago that it truly doesn't matter how we feel about a particular global adventure -- we can't do anything about it, nor about its outcome. Ninety-nine percent of us are too far removed from the War button or the Peace button to have any effect whatsoever on the pushing of them. So nevermind. We can hope and we can pray, but we simply can't afford to waste time fretting about them, nor distract ourselves from the here and now.

Here is where we are, now is what matters. Period. Connect, and love harder.