Reform/Idealism/Serenity - Part 1

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AN IMPERFECT UNION

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Reform/Idealism/Serenity

What do you do when someone says they believe in something that feels like it could harm you?

I wanted to kill them.

Not literally them.

But their beliefs.

What were mine?

There shouldn’t be guns in America.

We should take them all away.

They shouldn’t even exist.

I didn’t think of myself as an idealist.

Or a moralist.

Or a reformer.

Let alone an activist. Or extremist.

I was just certain.

I couldn’t understand how anyone could think otherwise.

And I wanted to help make my belief a reality.

For the country. For the world.

Or maybe just for myself.

Buy why?

I started to write this story in 2013.

This was soon after The Sandy Hook shooting at an elementary school.

And shortly after The Aurora shooting in a movie theater.

Schools and movie theaters were places I felt most at home.

Gun ranges and hunting grounds were not.

I had never even handled a gun.

And yet I knew they should be banned.

Or at the very least, heavily restricted.

This wasn’t ideology.

This was truth.

I was right.

Anything else was wrong.

Maybe you’ve felt that way?

Or maybe you’ve felt the same way.

But in the opposite direction.

Maybe someone like me says they believe in taking all the guns away.

And you feel that would harm you.

So you want to fight back.

Maybe you’d want to kill me.

Not literally.

But with your beliefs.

Or maybe literally ;0

What if I told you that your emotional reaction isn’t necessary?

What if I told you…

I get it now.

I see your side.

I accept it.

I know that you are good, even if you believe differently than I do.

And I know I’m good, too.

For believing what I believe.

And that mutual knowing?

It makes us more wise.

More discerning.

More hopeful.

More human.

More able to act, not just react.

More ready to reform what needs reforming.

And yet…

I don’t know what the right actions are.

That’s something we have to figure out together.

So please join me in reforming ourselves.

Not into progressives or conservatives.

Not right or left.

Not Democrat or Republican.

Not even American.

Or not.

Not polarized.

But alchemized.

Into individuals.

Serving not just ourselves.

But the collective.

And maybe even something greater still.

Then again…

I do not know!

Henry Jenkins, a USC professor whose Civic Imagination project has MacArthur “Genius” Grant Funding and is the author of COMICS AND STUFF, CONVERGENCE CULTURE and BY ANY MEDIA NECESSARY said of a version of this book…

“A tool designed to cut through political polarization and model how we might find common ground around this topic...Given my own commitments to working past political divides, I salute these efforts...my bet is that you will leave it less certain of your own stance than you were before reading it."

Thank you for reading AN IMPERFECT UNION.