I just came to a realization a few days ago.
I used to have friends that I just did stuff with. Around eighteen years ago, my wife and I moved to Alabama to be part of a new church work down there. We had lots of friends in that church. Great people, all of them.
Same thing everywhere we've been. Well, check that. That was until about ten years ago.
About ten years ago, people stopped being friends. Well, that's a bit extreme. People still were friends . . . . if you held the right opinions on political events. If you had the wrong ones, you were kicked out of the group, the family, the crowd, etc.
I look back on our time in Alabama. Some of the people in that church were very liberal. However, I didn't know that back then. No one cared what you thought about immigration, gun control, or same-sex marriage. We didn't talk about those things. They weren't important. Those things didn't even enter into the conversation. We just had fun together.
People who weren't alive back then can't believe that. For good reason. Now, that's ALL that matters.
Of course, those were the days before social media, before everyone had a platform to broadcast their opinion to the world and argue with those who had a different one. People were simply friends back then. Now they are either conservative or liberal, white or black, male or female, cis-gendered or non-binary, etc, etc.
I used to just have friends.
I used to have friends that would get together for dinner. We'd talk and laugh. We'd tell funny stories about our kids, about our spouses, about our families, about movies we saw. We'd make fun of each other and joke and laugh without any tension or worry that someone would say something wrong. No one discussed politics. No one claimed a statement was a micro aggression against them. No one even cared. It wasn't on the radar. We were just friends.
We weren't worried about offending anyone. Why? Because no one took offense. People understood fun and games, and people were able to live by the rule, "Take no offense when none is intended."
I miss those days.
I hope there is a way for us to get back to those days.
I'm sure that in 1860, America was as divided as we are now. People had to have opinions on states rights, slavery, secession, etc. There was no avoiding it.
Then the Civil War happened. Or War Between the States, depending on your geography.
Somehow, America was able to unite and be friends again after that terrible time of polarization. Maybe they simply got sick of all the arguing and fighting they saw. I'm there now. I'm sick of protests, of people constantly being offended, of arguing, of losing friends because I have the wrong political opinion, of being labelled and labeling and the constant headache and stress of always worrying about offending someone without meaning to.
Enough of the madness.
I used to just have friends. One by one, my friends with differing political opinions have left, unfriended, whatever; I don't see them anymore. Some of that is my fault, some of it is theirs. I think we've all gotten swept up in the madness of the last ten years. Unfortunately, I would imagine most of those friendships aren't coming back.
Maybe I'm just latching onto some petty nostalgia. Or maybe I'm really onto something here.
One thing is for sure- it would certainly be nice to simply be friends again.
I used to have friends that I just did stuff with. Around eighteen years ago, my wife and I moved to Alabama to be part of a new church work down there. We had lots of friends in that church. Great people, all of them.
Same thing everywhere we've been. Well, check that. That was until about ten years ago.
About ten years ago, people stopped being friends. Well, that's a bit extreme. People still were friends . . . . if you held the right opinions on political events. If you had the wrong ones, you were kicked out of the group, the family, the crowd, etc.
I look back on our time in Alabama. Some of the people in that church were very liberal. However, I didn't know that back then. No one cared what you thought about immigration, gun control, or same-sex marriage. We didn't talk about those things. They weren't important. Those things didn't even enter into the conversation. We just had fun together.
People who weren't alive back then can't believe that. For good reason. Now, that's ALL that matters.
Of course, those were the days before social media, before everyone had a platform to broadcast their opinion to the world and argue with those who had a different one. People were simply friends back then. Now they are either conservative or liberal, white or black, male or female, cis-gendered or non-binary, etc, etc.
I used to just have friends.
I used to have friends that would get together for dinner. We'd talk and laugh. We'd tell funny stories about our kids, about our spouses, about our families, about movies we saw. We'd make fun of each other and joke and laugh without any tension or worry that someone would say something wrong. No one discussed politics. No one claimed a statement was a micro aggression against them. No one even cared. It wasn't on the radar. We were just friends.
We weren't worried about offending anyone. Why? Because no one took offense. People understood fun and games, and people were able to live by the rule, "Take no offense when none is intended."
I miss those days.
I hope there is a way for us to get back to those days.
I'm sure that in 1860, America was as divided as we are now. People had to have opinions on states rights, slavery, secession, etc. There was no avoiding it.
Then the Civil War happened. Or War Between the States, depending on your geography.
Somehow, America was able to unite and be friends again after that terrible time of polarization. Maybe they simply got sick of all the arguing and fighting they saw. I'm there now. I'm sick of protests, of people constantly being offended, of arguing, of losing friends because I have the wrong political opinion, of being labelled and labeling and the constant headache and stress of always worrying about offending someone without meaning to.
Enough of the madness.
I used to just have friends. One by one, my friends with differing political opinions have left, unfriended, whatever; I don't see them anymore. Some of that is my fault, some of it is theirs. I think we've all gotten swept up in the madness of the last ten years. Unfortunately, I would imagine most of those friendships aren't coming back.
Maybe I'm just latching onto some petty nostalgia. Or maybe I'm really onto something here.
One thing is for sure- it would certainly be nice to simply be friends again.
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