Tolerate (v) 1.to treat with indulgence, liberality, or forbearance; 2. to permit; 3. to be able to bear; put up with~The Collins English Dictionary 2012
I’m regularly asked why this or that happens. I learned years ago, after the death of a beloved family member at the hands of a drunken and irresponsible driver, the one question you don’t want to ask is : WHY?
There’s no answer suffices to explain the inexplicable. There’s nothing makes sense when the tragedy outweighs the concepts of pain you’ve developed over the years. Pain, having been displaced from the understanding of a physical wound and positioned in the realm of other understandings and personal compartments developed within a person’s psyche, may totally conceal the answers your torn mind and shattered soul scream for understanding.
You ask God. God doesn’t answer in ways you understand.
In time you move onward. You walk into each new day without any clues as to how you should behave. You make mistakes. You suffer in ways others don’t understand because they look at you and must only tolerate your behaviors because to do less is to seem uncaring of them and heartless in their platitudes. Nobody knows “how you feel.” And if they do, it’s because they once survived a similar grief. Yet still, the depth and breadth and heights their pain assumed and explored was their circumstance, not yours and their pain isn’t your pain.
So; what are we getting at here?
We’re going to try and understand our tolerance of things that should hurt us. We’ll address circumstances where we tolerate or accede to as being objectionable but we’ll look past the obvious offense in order to move onward with the least amount of discomfort.
We fear discomfort. We distance ourselves as immediately as we can from discomfort. We rationalize and define discomfort as pain. Discomfort isn’t pain. Discomfort is a sensation of not being contented with your circumstances. Pain is physical and emotional/mental. It can be measured on a scale of one-to-ten as asked by doctors attending the injury. Example: your shoes pinch and your feet hurt; that’s discomfort. In comparison; what would you call the sensation of having foot bones broken and shifted while trying to move? Or, how would you describe having salt poured into an open wound? Those instances describe PAIN.
So; how do we explain the discomfort of watching aggressive and hostile Political/religious organizations exhibiting anti-social and genocidal agendas culminating in the deaths of thousands of people annually; people they accuse of being inferior and thus are blasphemers because they worship a different god, or practice different rituals than the aggressor?
People tolerate what doesn’t personally, physically and psychically give them pain. Where there’s no personal stake in the conduct; there’s no personal jeopardy.
Then there’s NO personal responsibility to protest, to intercede in favor of the oppressed; to speak against the blatant injustice in their thinking. Where lip-service is paid to deities and scripture no longer accepted as the guideposts of acceptable world-view and participation; inaction and self-distancing tolerance step to the forefront. We look away because it’s not our pain.
Children are becoming insensate, their emotional barometers incapable of feeling the pressure to speak out against injustice. They’re becoming numb to violence by watching hours of televised dramas where people are shot, maimed and killed. Then they see the same actors appearing in another drama the next day where he/she skips happily toward the sunset when the plot is resolved in 45 minutes plus commercials.
NO wonder we tolerate violence. We’re numbed to it and think it isn’t real. We’re numb to the televised deaths of Coptic Christian men, women and children at the hands of Islamists conducting Mohammed and Allah’s professed business as usual. That pain suffered by those people isn’t real because we’ve learned to tolerate death and genocide because “it isn’t my problem”.
It is my problem. It’s your problem. Martin Niemoller said:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak-out-
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and they did not speak out-
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me- and there was no one left to speak for me.
Islamists are here in America. They’re in your cities, your towns, your government and your schools. Their goal is to subjugate any and all who do not accept Islam. They want to subjugate us and our children and they want to kill those they see as less than human because their inhumanity has been described and prescribed by their prophet. They won’t accept you if you aren’t acceptant of Islam.
Will you tolerate this injustice until they come for you? Our will you stand, speak out and work to halt this indecency before it enslaves you and your children? Is your self-serving tolerance so great you’ll accept the deaths of your country and your people because you’re “a little uncomfortable” with being called a racist or an Islamophobe?
Think about it!
Thanks for listening
