WHAT THE #%@! - 3

Most years by this time I’ve had to mow the yard but the weather has been up and down so much we’re late on that part. I am yet to mow. Some of the weeds are going to seed already and outside my kitchen window in the grass by the patio, a solitary red tulip is in bloom. I’ve never noticed it before, probably because I mowed before it could shoot its flower. I have a run-away imagination that won’t let me leave things alone. So seeing something that seems out of sync with the rest of my experience, it sends me off on a tangent where imagination and possibility go off their leash. The tulip’s leaves are not pretty at all but the blossom is. It started me thinking which usually spins off into a story.

So I start an anthropomorphic conversation with the tulip: “What are you doing there? You are supposed to be out front with the other tulips.” There is no flower bed, just a spot in the grass where former residents planted bulbs for curb appeal. No mulch, no border, just something the realtor told them to do. They bloom early and when they are finished I mow it over and forget about them again until the next spring. They are blooming now but then I was expecting them. The red tulip in the back yard is an anomaly. I wonder if it feels out of place, all by itself, reaching up above the clumps of rye and blue grass like a homeless sapling in the middle of Nebraska. I’ll leave you alone until your petals fall. Then I’ll treat you like a weed and John Deere will bring you down to 3” along with the grass.” 

But I identify with the rogue tulip. It was Kermit the frog who said, “It ain’t easy being green.” Being different isn’t bad necessarily but too much different or off in the wrong direction, someone will notice and take you to task. I will default to some of my own, self inspired wisdom in that ‘Pushing back against you own culture is incredibly difficult.’ Nobody had to explain, I did the math myself. ‘Birds of a feather. . .’ that axiom holds up under fire, it is natural for us to feel comfortable, to prefer people who look, act and believe the same as we do. But what the #%@!, when your tribe adopts an attitude where Muslims = terrorists, African Americans = lazy & dishonest, where we need a wall to keep Mexicans out of the country; I can’t resist pushing back. I’m not a big protester, maybe passive aggressive but I get the message; I’m not good enough either. In my own terms, I’m a doubting unbeliever but religious  citizens would say I’m a Godless reprobate. I love my country but obviously, not enough. Americans I see in everyday places remind me of my son when he was learning to assert himself, behaving badly in the process. I don’t go places where I have to stand for the national anthem before they can begin; not so much an issue about the anthem or the flag but I don’t want to identify with narrow bigots, with their hands over their hearts, believing conformity makes them patriots. They would say it’s not about conformity but I know better. Patriotic hyperbole is all about conforming to a desirable stereotype.  

I don’t hide my feelings but I don’t flaunt them either. One’s position on moral values and beliefs, they stem from feelings, (and we don’t get to chose how we feel) not logic or reason, certainly not intelligence. We are driven to action by well established emotion long before reason, reason has to begin at the beginning before it can connect the dots, emotion is preprogrammed. Intelligence after the fact lets us feel like we’re in control. People take pride in moral decisions with righteous certainty but in fact it’s like taking pride in a sneeze, not a decision at all. The greater the moral element, the bigger the sneeze. Anthropomorphizing again, a self driving car has a human behind the wheel who thinks he is in control. As long as the car makes the same decisions the human does, the driver doesn’t know the difference. But when the car stops unexpectedly to avoid a crash, the driver’s only explanation is, it’s a timely malfunction.

I’m no smarter than anybody else. What makes me different is that my emotional compass isn’t calibrated to my culture and I know it. I act on emotions just like everybody else. Believing one can over ride emotions in favor of a rational response is ‘iffy’ at best. The morality caveat just compounds emotional influence in the process and I have already touched that base. Being an American right now is not comfortable by my experience. My pushback is only a bandaid so I can feel maybe, not so bad. I’m too old to expatriate to Canada or New Zealand and my family is close by. So here I am, trying to appear as if I belong, like a red tulip in the grass. But if I sound too much like a Godless heretic or less than patriotic, John Deere may mulch me like an unauthorized weed.