wet weekend

Happy birthday, Guro Rock! And thus, the number of people I know born in the year of the monkey ever increases. Every book I've read in Chinese Astrology tells me specifically that, us Tigers, lie across the circle from the year of the monkey, thus are volatile pairings and are not recommended. Yet, as my life plays out, I'm a magnet or perhaps I find them. In either case, I find all of them a delightful and enjoyable part of my life, including the fiance who'll be marking off a notch in a few days.

And no, some of friendships with my Year of the Monkey friends aren't the smoothest of friendships, because Monkeys say the damndest things at the damndest moments to which the Tiger has had growl at them right back. (One of them often starts his sentence with, "now, I hope I don't offend you...") Yet in the end, despite being diametrically opposed, there is still a great deal of mutual acceptance and admiration that keeps any of us from backing out of these friendships.

Anyway, from all the last few weeks travelling, spent most of this weekend at home, doing laundry, watching the Babylon 5 DVDs. OK, I'm a fan now, totally invested in the characters. The premise is that this space station was to be neutral territory to allow various alien species to work out their differences and create peace in ther galaxy. It's not Star Trek, so not everything falls into place as it could, not everyone is as nice as they should be. It seems more "real" that way. There is some fine fine writing in this series, moreso than most other sci-fi series I've watched. Lots of episodes about faith and myth, politics and war. In one of the story arcs there are two races: the Centauri and the Narn. The Centauri have devasted and occupied the Narn peoples for a century. The Narn character has an arc in which he begins in hate, and seeks to find healing for himself and his people.

Emil Guillermo writes about how opposing forces in the tsunami areas had banned together momentarily to assist in relief efforts, but now only a few weeks later, there are cautions to relief workers about entering various rebel held areas. And I think of Chatty's post on how most people don't concern themselves about war in the world, but a wave in the ocean, there is empathy in that.

And in thinking about all these things on a rainy weekend folding laundry, my mind wanders back to the lesson in the relationship class, "Love not as an emotion, but as a choice." Subsequently, if love and hate are diametrically opposed, then hate too can be an emotion or a choice. Emotion as a fleeting phenomena, and choice as an act of will.

So, if I apply this, it makes sense. In my relationships, I try to make love a choice, and hate an emotion. It allows me to hold on until the emotion subsides. But more often than not it is usually that hate is the choice and love is the emotion. So, it makes sense how people give freely to victims of tsunami than war. We deduce that in a tsunami there is no choice, there is no emotion, it is what it is, there is nothing to fight for or against. It makes love, hate, choice, war, irrelevant. It is indiscriminate. It's indifferent really.

In war, we believe there is logic, and purpose and belief. We compare these things to our own and determine justification. To choose one side affirms us, the other negates us, and to choose neither...well, we tell ourselves that it was their choice to fight, to live and to die. We will pay for only "our side."

150,000 seems like a large number of dead, but in comparison to the those who have died in war and turmoil and genocide, it's a drop in the bucket.

In Sci-Fi movies, the peoples of the earth unite to fight the alien creatures not because we love each other, but because it's easy to simply re-aim your guns. It's a new "other." But what is the "other" but a seed of oneself. If I place opposites at the two ends of a line and then connect the line into a circle, then what we had thought as opposites are now the same spot.

I'd like to believe that the numerous donations to tsunami victims is a sign that when there is no choice, that we would choose love. But what I really hope is that the tsunami gives us time to pause, time to compare the destruction by water to the destruction we have caused by our own hands. Time to get us off the track we are on, time enough to choose something different, perhaps to even enough time to choose love.