Many Shades of Truth
Wisdom from Mayans, Nietzsche, Glennon Doyle, and Bayo Akomolafe
Like you, I may have been at a loss for language these days. When the Israel-Palestinian war started, I went to social media for conversation and dialogue and scrolled until my eyes flooded, and I couldn't see words.
Until now, I’ve never really had writer’s block - the perks of being surrounded by constant chaos/drama. But lately, trying to put a word down has been like trying to run away from the bad guys in my nightmares with my feet stuck in quicksand or will away my gray hairs.
Now I know it was the universe telling me to shut up and listen. Meanwhile, people on social media kept telling me to say something, that my silence signified complicity. There’s a part of me that agrees with them.
And yet, if there’s anything I’ve learned (which isn’t much), it's that multiple truths can coexist. A shadow exists with light. Light cannot exist without shadow. Truth is never totally absolute, fixed, or binary, with hard edges. Truth is not 1-D or writ in Sharpie.
I loved how, on an episode of We Can Do Hard Things, Glennon Doyle, when asked to offer the “most important advice she’s ever received,” couldn’t offer up one kernel of wisdom. Nothing is absolute, she said. Everything has two sides and can be right and wrong and contradicted. Then she added something like: I realized that if I'm honest with myself, I will admit I know nothing.
The Aztecs and Mayans believed in the cosmic paradox, the duality. Friedrich Nietzsche said that truth was a metaphor. I believe that multiple, even opposing, truths can coexist.
On a practical level, believing in a singular truth creates a false binary. NYT contributing columnist Elizabeth Spiers wrote, "[simple] binaries imply simple solutions.” The idea that being pro-Palestine means you’re anti-Jewish or disagreeing with Hamas makes you anti-Palestine, furthers extremism, “cheapens the discourse, and impedes progress.”
Sitting with uncertainty is hard, and ambiguity is often interpreted as weakness. When I lived in Kingston, Jamaica, the city with the highest rate of homicide in the Americas at the time, I was told I had to “hitch” less. In other words, I had to become less indecisive and make quick, unwavering decisions. I had to adopt a more black-and-white thinking to survive the streets.
Do I still think in black-and-white? Sure. When I get desperate, and go into my survivalist cavewoman brain, clawing my way to safety.
In my thinking brain, I imagine the desperation and hopelessness many Palestinians must feel to consider death preferable over life unchanged. I believe a 24-hour notice to evacuate a country of 1.1 million is wrong. The Hamas call to obliterate all Jews “from river to sea” is horrific. Some would say evil. I have a problem with that word. I need to think on that more.
After many days of silence, listening, reading, and reflecting, I feel an awe, a weird comfort, from humanity’s impassioned collective response. Witnessing one of the largest tidal waves of human feeling feels massive, spiritual - transcendent, even.
It gives me comfort that people are standing up for the rights of Palestinians, and it gives me comfort that people are standing up for the rights of Jews. It gives me comfort that so many people care enough to post about it and fight over it.
It gives me comfort that people feel passionate enough to call us out for not sharing in their passion. It gives me comfort that people are not posting, maybe because, like me, they need to think and are here to listen and learn, and maybe they are stunned and can’t stop thinking about it, and every time they look at the news, they go blind with tears.
It gives me comfort to know that everyone else has writer’s block.
It gives me comfort to know that humanity still knows how to FEEL, and it gives me comfort that this letter might give you comfort knowing that someone feels the way you do.
I know that the government often doesn’t represent its people any more than my government represented me when they separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border without any way of reuniting them.
Peace starts in the home, and tiny wars are waged daily in my house. My children fight and retaliate. Before all this went down, I would tell them about Israel and Palestine and how vengeance only leads to more suffering. It usually didn't work. Survivalism is extremism. We're not in our right minds when pushed into corners.
Some call the Hamas strikes the largest mobilization of decolonization in our lifetimes. When you frame it like that, it’s helpful to remember the U.S. is a country run by and founded by colonizers. What does that mean? I don't know. You tell me.
There are other times I think in binaries truths. For example, seatbelts. I made my brand new baby wear one (a choice I now regret). Also, killing people - I draw the line there. And, I dunno, filing taxes. But, like Glennon Doyle, I can think of several possible exceptions.
Okay, ignore that. Everything is gray. Grey? Gruyère.
That is, until I get desperate.
I'm no expert on Middle Eastern politics. But if you're looking for good resources, I highly recommend these ones:
The Free Press - They do a good job of showing the humanity on both sides.
Letters from an American - Heather Cox Richardson succinctly distills information from reputed news sources around the world.
I leave you with this quote from Báyò Akómoláfé:
You see, when the world becomes too solid for nuance, when it hardens up and crystallizes into a binary that forces you to pick a side, compelling you to become intelligible to the hardness that creeps on its once loamy surfaces, cracks become the first responders.
We need a politics of tenderness more than ever. Not tenderness as capitulation to particular conclusions that have already been made. Not tenderness as "if you don't see the world as I do, there's something wrong with you." But tenderness as the nurturing of grace that allows something different, something even beautiful, to be born in the midst of the fires.
Be well, friends. Drop a line. Love you!
Summer
This was very good. 🙏
I read this now for the first time exactly one year later and I still can't wrap my head around the fact that as a species we still can't figure out how to get along. Too much suffering and death, and for what? I have no words and am thankful for yours.