I have more compassion
when I know my limitations
and for all the facts I know
they don’t add up to the truth.
At a barbecue
I stood around
and talked to people
who might as well have been space aliens.
I was taken-aback by the Asian woman who asked me what I do
My gut reaction was to say, “I do nothing.”
But, I gave an appropriate response
and she told me that she works in HR
and the conversation fizzled-out
into silence.
When I claim ignorance in conversation
people won’t argue with me.
Sometimes, I’m mystified by what they say
“I lived in California for 30 years. Today, feels like an earthquake day.”
“What does an earthquake day feel like?” I asked.
“Humid—it causes the plates to slip.”
I felt like I had entered into the Dark Ages…
The stories people say
when they aren’t corrected
are a gateway into the past
where monsters
feast on brains
in the swamps and fog.
When I left the barbecue
I went to my parent’s house and talked about spiritual experiences
“Fire flows through you when you hear the spiritual wind,” my dad said.
His stories speak of altered sensations
and my mother’s concrete facts are so specific
she mixes them up, like word salad.
Which one is wrong more often?
And which one do we want to believe?
Intellectual Shaman 
Love people. No matter what they say or how you feel intuitively about them. They are as messed up as all of us.
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Yes indeed!!! All we need is love… 🙂
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But seriously, connect or be forever unconnected. People have a lot to learn from you and you vice a versa. Don’t go isolationist on this
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We are, often, socialized, to accept others’ values as our own, without, questioning them, until, we grow older, and, encountered things in our own lives, that turn, all the values we acquired from before, upside down.
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Very True taurusingemini! Thanks for your thoughtful comment! 🙂
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I think conversation never goes the way we want it. It’s just a mish-mash of this and that and what we hardly understand. Or maybe we just aren’t interested. 🙂
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Yes… often times conversations seem random, until that spark when you have something in common.
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Comments on a post. You write them, compelled by a spark, something you read which resonates, and you think you have something in common with the author but nothing is less sure. You see, when you really have something in common, the conversation will be uplifting, like a wave in high tide, but it also makes you feel like you are fighting the tide somehow, for similarities and identicalities tend to repel each other to a certain extent, like two positive charges. In lamer words, if you feel no asperities in the conversation, if the whole thing is a big nod, then you have little in common…
It is late in my part of the world and I am probably not making any sense any more, I better go to sleep. Great post by the way, too bad for me I only found about it now. Better late than never…
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Thanks for your words Rabih!!! 🙂
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