I am entitled to change my mind. As far as I know anyone is. I would suppose it would also be so in a totalitarian regime. Unless one’s mind is controlled one can change one’s mind. In fact changing one’s mind is expected. How often each one of us has heard, wait ’til you get older inferring that age would teach us something and guide us to see whatever in a different light. Of course it’s not age per se, but the experience that automatically comes with it, and to be sure the learning that we may have had more time to engage in. It is clear then: for us, the factor of time and the learning and experience it implies, makes changing our minds a positive and seeing a given issue differently expected. Why doesn’t this seem to be so for politicians? As a rule we criticize those who change their minds. They flip flop, they bend with the wind, they adopt a stance for political reasons. Rarely do we seem to give them the benefit of the doubt or apply to them the same criteria: that time, its learning and experience may, and usually does, change one’s mind. When John Edwards ran for President a few months ago (seems so much longer doesn’t it?) it wasn’t enough for him to change his mind about having voted for the war, he had to apologize, then his change of mind could be taken seriously. It’s quite possible that while the change of mind was genuine, the apology was political–the opposite of how it was generally interpreted. But regardless of examples (and none that would be recent enough to illustrate this would come without an emotional charge that would negate the benefit of illustration) we seem to distrust a politician when he or she professes a different view on a given issue. We go back and look at their record and say, oops, he–or she–voted differently, he–or she–must be lying, or spinning their vote to appeal to this or that demographic group. Indeed there are times when a record is telling, when there is a consistency that tells us something, or some pattern that is revealing of something we ought to understand about them. But as we do, we ought to factor in the dimension of learning and experience, we ought to grant them the right we each have to change one’s mind. It may seem a small thing but it is an election year, soon we shall be deluged with political ads touting the record of so and so as an omen of whatever fear the other side wants us to feel. Hopefully we shall be wise to that, grant the candidate the same rights we have and come to our own conclusion.
Including Those Who Hunger
A recent New York Times story mentions how the temple offerings of poor people in
When I think of people in Egypt not being able to buy bread, of people in Mexico buying less tortillas, of people in India having less rice and lentils, and people in Africa sometimes not being able to buy food at all, I want to shake those I know who deign pasta because it has too many carbs, who won’t buy veggies unless they’re organic, who have the luxuries of buying carbon neutral products regardless of what they cost, who won’t eat leftovers and throw out food, who won’t eat chicken unless it’s at least free range, or who allow a caprice to let food rot in the frig because they feel like eating something else. But of course shaking them would not instill the sense of privilege we ought to feel. Sometimes we can’t help our circumstances, and the people I have in mind didn’t choose their advantages, but regardless of our advantages, large or small, those of us who have, have a responsibility to those who have not. It often hurts to remember that many go hungry while I and so many count calories not to gain weight, and it’s easy to forget about those who hunger, because frankly, sometimes bringing them into consciousness also brings pain.
It’s easy to assuage the murmurings of our principles, ethics and scruples by writing a check to whatever charity will next solicit us. But it’s not enough. We must widen the range of our conscience to deepen our understanding of what it means to share.
Corporal Shalit’s Wages of War
Until former President Carter made public his discussions with Hamas, no one,not even his parents, were sure what had happened to Corporal Gilal Shalit, the young Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian Militants in 2006. According to Carter he will, or has, been given permission to write a letter to them. Whether or not they do, or he goes ahead and writes, when I begin to think of what he has endured for some two years now, I can’t help but be as a younger generation might say, awed. For anyone who follows the news closely, the plight of the Palestinians is no longer news. Their standard of living has decreased as jobs disappear, as fuel is short and food not always easy to find, affordable or plentiful. If the average Palestinian has to undergo this kind of hardship, forgetting for a moment, the checkpoints and their consequences, what must it be like for Corporal Shalit on a day to day basis? What was he fed? Did he have enough water, were sanitary conditions at least bearable? Barry Bearak the New York Times reporter held in