Tilting at windmills, maybe: Keeping peace, love and understanding alive

One of the huge benefits of writing for a weekly newspaper is time. For most of the events we cover, there is usually time enough between the actual happening and the deadline to write about it to assimilate the information. We can process first impressions with the details from our notes, ask follow-up questions, maybe find some points of comparison with past events, then sit down to write a report that gives readers the important details and possibly even entertains them.

July 22, 2016 11:30 am

One of the huge benefits of writing for a weekly newspaper is time. For most of the events we cover, there is usually time enough between the actual happening and the deadline to write about it to assimilate the information. We can process first impressions with the details from our notes, ask follow-up questions, maybe find some points of comparison with past events, then sit down to write a report that gives readers the important details and possibly even entertains them.

That’s not what I’m going to do with this column.

Sunday, I got back from a trip that may change my life. I think it will, anyway, because it did during my travels. The challenge will be making those effects last.

For five days, I hung out with the peace, love and understanding crowd on a beautiful mountaintop near a dazzling lake. Maybe it was the altitude, maybe I got a contact high from all the marijuana smoke, but my thought processes started changing on day one.

I stopped railing against ignorance, corruption and rude people. I started wondering if it might be possible to fix a broken system, no matter how big, with simple actions, no matter how small, like looking at the person who just jumped the line, smiling and letting them know that it’s not a big deal.

It’s not entirely different from reading about terrorist attacks, acknowledging your own fears, then forgiving (or at least trying to) the truck driver, who acted out of fear or in the belief that he was doing good, or for any of a dozen other reasons that we humans do incomprehensible things.

Now that I’m home, I’m trying to keep those new ideas alive. They don’t have an ideal environment to grow in though; it’s a lot of deadlines, late nights, driving, and the inescapable election season news.

It reminds me of Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. That guy saw evil to fight wherever he traveled, but his companion, who wasn’t exactly smart but always kind, adventured right along with him, unchanged.

Can I do it, keep the peace, love, and understanding alive, back in the real world?

Together, we’ll find out.