It's the division that's killing me

The pandemic has been rough on everybody in some way. That's a guarantee. The thing that's killing me is the division. *Everybody should be wearing a mask vs. Nobody should force anybody to wear a mask.

*Everybody should get vaccinated vs. Nobody should say what goes into my body. *People who care about others get vaccinated vs. People who see past political facades stay unvaccinated. *People should be forced to vaccinate for the greater good vs. The government should never have the right to force vaccinations. *People who are unvaccinated are the reason this pandemic is still here vs. The truth is not being told about what dangers vaccinated people are facing.

And so on and so forth. That's not so incredibly different from the normal flow of whatever is going on in the world, even if it's a little more intense. What I'm really struggling with though is people within my own religion tearing people to pieces over these differences, publically saying how wrong the other side is, how right they are, who's the wheat and who's the tares, etc. It's fine to disagree. My experience in life almost makes me feel like a disagreement ambassador. People have always disagreed. They will always disagree. You can disagree without dividing. It just requires both sides respecting the other. What I see is many saying, "That's fine. You can have that opinion" and then saying or posting things to other friends belittling the opinion you have or the conclusions you've drawn.

I see people posting about disagreements they've had with people on social media and "I just wish I could get them to see it this way" type of comments. Why? If you feel so comfortable with the conclusions you've come to, why do you have time and energy to spend attacking somebody's conclusions that are different? Don't you have other things to worry about? You can belong to the same religion, come to different conclusions about many social or political issues and neither one of you have to be labeled right or wrong, righteous or apostate, caring or careless, humble or proud, etc. Really respecting and loving other people means that you still hold them in high regard, even if they have different opinions and approaches. You don't suddenly put them in a category of "people who are wrong or less or unrighteous or whatever". I'm just exhausted from the division. That's all.

Reading

I'm currently reading The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel. It states this: "There's danger in being principled in the midst of a war, but I believe that it's more dangerous not to be."

What beautiful words!!! There is a war going on right now where people are being used as weapons. I believe people are (mostly) unknowingly assaulting others while turning a blind eye to the truth. People don't know who to trust or where to get reliable information. Uncertainty makes soldiers out of those who are reluctant to take a stand. It feels like a great escape to read about a "real" war, a more tangible war where each side is labeled and aware that a fight is afoot. I'm 40% of the way through the book and look forward to reading more. -------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of reading, it can be a clever teacher. I checked out a book, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, from the library and knew I would not understand a great deal of it but I wanted to take on a challenge. I read a huge chunk of it word for word and did learn a little bit but decided to skim the rest of the topics. This way, I could get an idea of all the topics broadly without trying to push so much in areas that I didn't have enough knowledge to dive deeper into. I feel like I learned quite a bit this way. One thing that really stuck with me was a small blurb about the ghost town of Pripyat in Ukraine, a town evacuated after radioactive material was released in 1986. I wished I could know more about this town and what it was like today. Later that day, I was substituting a chemistry class and the teacher was having the class watch a video about uranium, which is radioactive. A bit into the video, the host visits Pripyat!!! I got to hear more about the situation, see the town as it is today, learn about radioactive levels there currently, and just get more insight about the whole thing. I couldn't believe it! I read more about it, too, when I got home and found out Pripyat is the town linked to Chernobyl, which is a place I had heard about.