Frank Wilczek was discussing complementarity on this podcast from last week. He's a nobel prize winning physicist. "When people ask me what religion I practice, I say complementarity".
I could not really understand all of his thoughts, but I think the idea might be something like: either, both, at the same time but not observable at the same time, mutually exclusive but interdependent. Having the perspective that other perspectives exist and can exist even if they are different than yours might just be the key to surviving these harrowing times.
When running on the top of the ridge yesterday, I was riling up the cows. Not on purpose, but given there is not a lot of foot traffic up there, when someone comes running along it warrants at the very least a huffy "moo", and often induces mass hysteria (hysteeria?). It is all what you are used to I suppose, because the cows on the Bottom where I also run keep chewing grass nonchalantly and push their muzzles through the gate for a better sniff and maybe a pat as I trot by.
I wonder when what once seemed an improbable evil becomes so normal that we forget to name it as wrong? Standing in a long line in Amsterdam a couple of summers ago, I awaited my turn to walk through the house where Anne Frank and her family hid. The lines are always long, I hear. People from all over the world want to see where this young diarist dwelt and stuck magazine photos on her wall and ate potatoes and had crushes on boys and was dragged out of bed into a stock car on a train that separated her from her family and housed her in filth until she died, still a child.
It is now a policy that in order to deter families from coming here illegally, we kidnap their children at the border and put them into camps.
Where I work, as a physician in a government supported program for vulnerable elders, we cannot even make a "policy" about where we store our number 2 pencils without getting the OK from the state and feds who monitor us for quality and ethical care. So how the hell did this "policy" get into place without some kind of discussion first? What country do we live in? Was someone blogging about this very question during WWII as well? Were they, as I, feeling like writing and thinking about it is not helping but maybe there is no hope and I guess I will just finish this cup of coffee and go to work while my own children are safely tucked away, sleeping in on the first day of summer vacation?
Beauty exists and does not exist, depending on your perspective. Love exists and does not exist, because sometimes it is invisible like that point past your fingertips in the fog where the world seems to end.
Yesterday a dog bit me on the ass when I did a house call. Later, dog was curled on the floor near my feet while its person and I watched Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dance. The movie was playing when I arrived, muted during our visit, then as I unmuted it before leaving, I was drawn into the scene along with the elder I had just doctored. Elder used to dance, can now barely move. Fred and Rita are dead but on the screen immortal, and my ass lives to see another day and I love dogs no less.
Today will be day 268 in a row of running for me. I was wondering recently what it means but got the advice to stop thinking and just keep running. Dory from "Finding Nemo" had similar advice. She had very poor short term memory. But her past exists as does her present and future and they are all happening and happened and about to happen. Might as well keep swimming through the waters of despair and absurdity, intelligence and inanity, deep love and resounding hate. When you mix it all together it makes life soup.
When I get a mouthful of unexpected hate, I immediately spit it out. It tastes so rotten and my biological system knows it is toxic. Yesterday when I was driving to hospice, a guy pulled up behind me as I was waiting for traffic to clear to make a turn, and laid on his horn and leaned out his window and screamed the f bomb at me. I think he was in a hurry. I felt my heart pound in fear for a moment but I managed not to get angry. I felt a little sad and I had to do a proverbial spit out the driver's side window to rid myself of the taste. I think he would've beat me to death, right there on my way to hospice, just because I existed. I was wondering if the "READ" sticker on my car pissed him off. Or maybe he just found out his child has cancer or his wife is leaving him or his dog died and I was just the target of his innermost pain. Either way, I drove on to hospice and went about my day.
Which brings me back to he concept that contrasting theories and realities can exist simultaneously to explain phenomena. Other perspectives and ways of being exist. But I propose there are times when going about ones day is not the answer. Are there angry people out there who feel disenfranchised? Yep. Does that make the current normalization and acceptance of racism, sexism, violence, school shootings, and ripping children away from their parents who came to our country for a better life OK?
When I run on top of the ridge on a foggy day, I know the beauty is still there. It resides in my mind's eye and it reassures me that I can run and run and not fall off the edge of the earth. We live in the foggiest of times. We need to run toward the beauty, love, kindness and ethical correctness as fast as we can.
As fast as we can.
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