Unapologetically Thoughtful Woman Seeks Thinking Humans

The Guardian: Paths of Desire, 14 June 2020

Unapologetically Thoughtful Woman Seeks Thinking Humans

By Jane Tawel

July 6, 2020

I am going to sound a bit too personal and probably a bit too irritable in this post, but I figured that someone out there in my audience-land may need to hear this today.

I am an unapologetically thinking, thought-full, thought-provoking woman. I am both an energetic teacher and a seeking life-learner. I am overly empathetic and feistily philosophical and I have a strong worldview that tries hard — really hard — to be ethical and moral, but also flexible and open-minded. I try to not close my mind by the continual process of opening my heart. I am equally passionate and limited, hard-working and lazy, and the yin and yang of that kind of energy keeps me humbled. I believe in the greatness of the human spirit, the fallenness and brokenness of each of us and our institutions, and that there is Someone, Something, that IS but Is Not Us, that moves throughout the cosmos with justice, wisdom, creativity, goodness and most of all, love.

And here is my getting irritable part of all this: I will do my very best, no matter when, what or to whom, to sincerely apologize when I am wrong. BUT I am sick to the point of anger and distraction of being asked to apologize for how it makes “you feel” when I am right.

There are some things that are not open to opinion. There are some things that are black or white, right or wrong. People really can be either thoughtful and intelligent and wise or unthinking, stupid, and foolish. As a matter of fact, we all are sometimes one or the other of these things, and to insist that we are never stupid or foolish or are never just plain, downright wrong, has opened the Pandora’s Box of Evils currently assailing the modern world. There is good. And there is evil. And there is just plain messing up, making mistakes, or being misguided or selfish. When I am any of those things, I, just like you do, try to hide behind denial, justification, falsehoods, or anger. But I also try to want to change that knee-jerk response, and realize sooner rather than later when I have been wrong or wronging and to course-correct when possible.