Wisdom. Listening to what I did not want to hear, I stopped today and watched my parakeet chatter. He was sure he was being heard, probably thinking he was making an important point, one I would ponder. I thought about why he talks. Often, he just holds forth, thinking I understand him.
That made me think some more. Funny isn’t it – different as we are, some days my own disenchantment with the world makes me stop typing, look at him, and vent my spleen. I expect no response, but he listens to me as I explain or ask how another new stupidity can be happening.
Like me, he probably feels better having gotten his concern, request, or issue off that green and yellow chest. I always feel a bit better myself, having observed the world’s absurdity out loud.
Freedom of speech – that sacred right in our First Amendment – is often discussed today, defended for its value in helping us get at truth, or just say our piece. It is wonderful for encouraging a contest between different ideas – which makes us think, reflect, and reorient, sometimes making us wiser.
Of course, I hear you. This assumes things we can all doubt. Do people even want the truth anymore? Do they have the courage to listen, the ability to think, reflect, and humbly reorient?
Do they understand there is a thing called truth, right and wrong, up and down, east and west, valid and invalid, True North and magnetic north, and – closing that loop – that absolutes exist in math, law, and life, that freedom of speech is one of those unchanging absolutes?
Do people understand that societies rise or fall on their willingness to understand? That they prosper or perish on willingness to care? Do they understand that a fair, civil, and self-governing society persists only with respect for rights? Do they grasp that rights like speech must be equal?
Do people bother to see history’s light in their lives? Assuming many do not, do they at least see the hurricane’s circularity – that if we suppress others’ rights, we dishonor the concept of equal rights and invariably will lose our own? Churchill’s crocodile is blind; if you feed oppression, it will eventually come back and eat you.
Do people even care about others’ rights, given how our leaders are behaving, how they oppress those they do not like, then just shrug and move on, imagining others will like their special brand of oppression, knowing that respect for free speech is hard work, and often very uncomfortable?
Do people realize that rights that are first dishonored soon disappear? Do they even care how others are treated? Do they appreciate we are different in what propels us, but that is our strength? Do they see that free speech prevents enforced conformity? Do they see the beauty in all these freedoms?
If you are a pessimist – or some might say a realist – you will say “No, people do not care about the truth, do not believe in it, do not understand it. They see no linkage between dishonoring the rights of others and losing their own. They live in the dark satisfaction of seeing others persecuted.”
I hope that is not true, except for a few. I think, in the night’s quiet, the truth does find most of us, even those who think they can outrun it. Like a shadow or the next dawn, we can never outrun it, no matter how we try. Conscience is like that, it forces reflection, often reorientation, involuntarily.
And what does that mean? It means there remains enormous hope – if we can just keep allowing differences in outlook and in our differing perspectives on life to surface, inviting them forward, honoring free speech, knowing that the present discomfort makes us stronger, and sometimes wiser.
Well, I had just rolled through all these thoughts, thinking we must learn to tolerate what we do not understand when my parakeet thought I had thunk enough and exploded. He can be so noisy at times the dogs resettled at my feet. They just did. Then, it swept over me – he too had something to say. Looking over, that’s when I noticed his water dish was empty. Ah, wisdom.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
