It’s getting more and more difficult to be open-minded.
This may well be because of my advancing age or creeping senility, and I don’t totally dispute that.
I believe, however, it’s because of noise.
Let’s define terms.
These days, noise is more than audible.
There’s visual noise — extreme and/or subtle distractions, blinky-flashy-twinkly, electronic.
(And we’ll save the whole topic of idiots reading their inane texts while driving for another post.)
There’s sensory noise, the vibrations triggered by raspy or rumbling exhaust pipes and bass kickers, the jostles from potholes absorbed by your butt and spine.
Then there’s emotional noise, the baggage that accompanies so, so much communication anymore. And that’s the noise that makes it almost impossible to keep an open mind.
To be clear, I believe certain thoughts and certain beliefs should swim in deep legitimate passion. Our nation’s Founders were no slouches in the “Give me liberty or give me death” department; likewise, Churchill rallied Great Britain to some of its greatest days with his emotional pleas.
But any attempt at a debate nowadays rapidly becomes a competition, a shouting match in which anger and even threats supersede logic and the 30,000-foot view.
Winner take all, and not give and take.
I am absolutely sure there are people whose observations and opinions I’d love to consider, because I’ve not lived everywhere, done every type of job, been African-American or female or anything except a white Euro-mongrel middle-class American male. They all have much to offer.
But I can’t see myself talking with a pickup driver whose rear window has stickers of “My Family”: from left, AK-47, AR-15, 20-gauge, Mac-10 and Glock 9mm. Or the person whose Malibu’s trunk is held together by stickers proclaiming MAGA, Lock Her Up, and It’s All Fake News.
Yes, I’d love to have a conversation. But if other people come to their figurative door with a drooling, snarling Doberman, I don’t think I can.
I’d be thrilled — and I’m sure many people would be, too — if the noise would stop, and we could start to open ourselves to many points of view.
It’s possible to cut through the noise. It has to be. I’m trying.
How about you?