Live and let live

I recently celebrated (if celebrate is the right word) getting another year older. Woohoo! Another year older and wiser as the saying goes. Well, at least I got it half right.

No need to disclose the actual number but suffice it to say it was what they (will someone once and for all finally share with me exactly who ‘they’ are?) refer to as a milestone birthday. All I know is that I’ve been on this rock long enough to meet a whole lot of folks. Add in that I spent a fair portion of my career as a recruiter where you truly get to meet all kinds of people, and it adds up to a whole lot of interaction with my fellow Homo Sapiens. As a recruiter I didn’t hire most of those I met. I’d guess the ratio of interviewed to hired was maybe 10 to 1 if I was lucky. That said, I have liked most of the people I’ve met, professionally and otherwise, over the course of my lifetime. 

Haven’t agreed with a lot of them on certain issues. Some of the nicest people I know to this day are folks that I fundamentally don’t see eye to eye with on what I’d consider core issues. Sometimes It’s been a real struggle to even acknowledge that their views have any merit but I’ve forced myself to swallow deeply and fall back on the realization that they may in fact be right while I may be wrong. 

I got a business degree back in the day when one of the folks we studied was a gentleman by the name of Lee Iacocca  who among other things helped bring to market such famous icons as the Ford Mustang, the Ford Pinto, and who ultimately was credited with helping save a struggling Chrysler during the late 70’s and early 80’s. Someone once asked Mr. Iacocca to what he attributed his success as a business leader to which he replied “Being right 51% of the time”. Now, I’d credit Mr. Iacocca with having a better percentage of being right than I have so its not unusual for me to question my own beliefs when someone brings a new perspective to my admittedly small attention span. Looking back (I think we’re allowed that indulgence once a year when celebrating our date of birth) I realize I’ve ultimately changed my opinion in the face of new information more often than I’d like to admit which is always a little disconcerting given how much easier this journey called Life would be if WE were always right. 

Wisdom is a commodity as fleeting as the supply of baby formula. Certainly in this one-year-older noggin there’s not so much wisdom as I would wish for given the amount of trivial STUFF its accumulated in Lo These Many Years. Still, I try. My curiosity is still very much intact and as far as I’m concerned when that’s gone, well, I guess I’m done.

One of my friends of the last couple of years is uniquely equipped to spark said curiosity and challenge my beliefs. We agree on almost nothing of any substance. Yet at the end of the day we simply agree to disagree before moving on to topics of greater merit such as sports, women, and the weather. I follow this friend on Instagram and he follows me. I like some of his posts, he reciprocates by liking some of mine. Recently his posts have shone a spotlight on his difficulty with dealing with all things LGBTQ and with gender identity. I know a lot of folks still struggle with all the nuance in the alphabet soup of LGBTQ (I know I’m missing some additional letters but I cant honestly at this moment remember what they are). Of course that’s why we have Google so getting over my own laziness I guess the current mix is LGBTQIA2s+. Now, I don’t know what some of these really even mean, but after viewing some of my friend’s recent posts, which did make me reflect on my own perspective, I came to the same conclusion I had before - this place called Earth would be a better place if we could simply live and let live. I have a lot of respect for the institution of Motherhood -Mother Nature, Mother Earth, my own mother, anyone who can endure 12+ hours of labor, you get the idea. What ultimately settled it for me after listening to both side’s arguments (and there are a lot of arguments) was one mother’s statement when asked what she thought of her child’s choice. Her response was “It’s my child. I love them no matter what. I accept them.”

I’m not a mother, never have been, never will be so will never be able to speak as such but in an increasingly long life I have learned a tad bit about love and, albeit sometimes grudgingly, acceptance and if I know anything in what Wisdom I do have its that there’s too little of either. Perhaps its not license plate material like “Live Free or Die”, but for me live and let live carry a lot of weight. So for now, my dear friend, excuse me if I don’t ‘Like’ these particular posts and we’ll add this to the list of topics on which we disagree. Let’s be patient, I’m sure there’s something out there that will have us both nodding our heads in agreement. We should live so long. Happy Birthday.