veteran
I am close with one veteran. He opened my mind not to how I wanted to think, but to comprehend the thinking of people I disagree with politically. He gave me the slowed-down, pragmatic speech version of what I would normally dismiss as more conservative rhetoric. It helped more than I had imagined to hear not the worst, most angry, most yelled conservative thought, but the most thoughtfully explained. This was 2004. Today things feel different. He’s not even a conservative anymore.
When he went to Afghanistan the third time with the special forces, he gave me his creative writing assignments, the originals marked up by the professors we both loved, the professors who told us we were the two who had a publishable book in us. If he didn’t come back, these were mine.
I wrote to him constantly while he was deployed. I saved his edited writing and returned it to him. I used to write him every Veteran’s Day and thank him for his service, and there were years where I was the only one who did.
Then I met my husband and got married and the vague intimacy of our long friendship seemed inappropriate.
I learned he’d left two marriages, both on bad terms, both with women I cared about. I learned he had not treated them well.
This isn’t an anecdote about people in the military being bad, or even conservatives being bad. I wrote to him today and thanked him for his service, like I used to, and then I thanked the veterans I know less well.
As a younger man, my friend was braver and more accepting. He was willing to explain his beliefs in a way I could interpret if not agree with.
Is it age that hardens us away from this? Or is it the world itself, changing around us and asking us to be more rigid, more defined?
Reposted from http://ift.tt/2fIXCtQ.
