Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Getting Tired

I plan to refer to this Facebook status report as time passes.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not there yet but I'm getting there.
    I started years ago with a few members of my own family and a handful of personal friends whose friendship I valued (and in many cases still do).

    Well actually it started in my teens, when I experienced for the first time the phenomenon of people "not speaking" any more when they learned I was a budding social activist. But that was fairly easy. It happened at a time in my life when I needed to know which people had enough character to disagree without being disagreeable. I had the "for me or against me" attitude of youth -- the same one, incidentally, that remains embedded in the thinking of most of my conservative friends.

    But now, as I approach old age, I'm weaning off altogether. My so-called "activism" has shrunk to a few Facebook and Twitter gestures, with an occasional blog post tossed in. Seven years as a senior care-giver has shown me that a significant subset of the population must simply pass on without changing. Hopefully their bigotry and inflexible thinking will diminish with their numbers. As I said, I'm getting there. My goal is to remain civil as long as possible, and remain disciplined enough to needle people as much as I can get away with without being insulting or offensive. And little by little I'm getting tired of even that. It's no longer fun. I sense I'm being dismissed as just an old guy with crazy ideas, And it bothers me to feel simply tolerated.

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