For me, awakening has to do with color as well as thought. I live in a black and white world, but I am not black and white person. I am not in the left or the right. My farm is neither red nor blue. People do not have to do what I would do. I change my mind, see the other point of view, or try, and my hues are color and gray.
But the larger world is cast in black and white. People seem to me to be conditioned to see things one way or the other. I put up a coupon on my Facebook page for Fromm Family Food for Black Friday. They are a sponsor of Bedlam Farm and I see their food is very popular among the people who read this blog. A good match for me and the response has been very nice. I am reminded that people sometimes appreciate advertising, it brings them to things they want and need, as well as to things they don’t.
It was only a minute or so before someone e-mailed to say they were surprised that I would help promote a Black Friday event since I have lamented the dissolution of Thanksgiving by encroaching Thanksgiving Day sales and promotions.
How, they wondered, could it be okay for me to have a sponsor who might do something I would not do or approve of? In America, living with different points of view is now considered hypocrisy, when it once was the noblest of ideals.
A black and white person, I thought. This is not the way I think. I am surrounded by good people who do things I would not do. Shop on Thanksgiving. Go to Wal-Mart. Vote for blockheads. Aren’t good on this issue, or that. Who happily put labels on themselves – conservative, liberal, pro-life, anti-life – that I do not use. Many people view animals differently than I do. Go to doctors every week of their lives for pills and more tests for more pills. I do not wish to live in a hermetic bubble, my own ideas reflected back at me. I want other ideas, even if I don’t like them.
They are the nourishment of the living mind, not alien notions to be suspicious of. The Internet makes it simple for people to talk only to themselves, and that was no Jefferson’s idea. His big idea was to mix ideas up in a democratic brew, not to lock them up in blogs and Facebook pages. In fact, sometimes it seems the whole idea of Facebook is to make it easy for people to talk to one another. I do this too. I don’t want angry or rude people around me or on the website I pay for. But I do l love new and different ideas. They are precious to me.
People have great fun shopping for Black Friday even if that is not fun for me. But they don’t have to have fun or shape a holiday in the way that I would for them to have a right to live happily in my world. Or yes, even to post on my Facebook page.
This black-and-white view of the world is as epidemic in the animal world as it in Washington, our national headquarters for closed and shrinking minds. There is only one way to get a dog. In this new digital universe, we are thrown to together often and I don’t wish for a blog where everyone thinks the way I do, as challenging as that sometimes is. I wish for a blog where people respect my choices and see their own respected as well. I am learning to do that and mean it. It is sort of the point.
As a photographer I am drawn to color and light, every day.
As a human being, I am coming to see that gray is my favorite color. I don’t think of life as black-and-white, but filled with hues and shades.