Photo © Carol Bergman 2025
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way… For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best."
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
I have a new friend in town and we have so much to talk about that there is very little oxygen left in the café. We usually hang out for two hours or so, though I could listen to him and talk to him all day. I have no illusions that we'll agree on everything we discuss as we get to know one another, but it doesn't matter, the air is clear, the conversation is civil, there is no judgment at the table.
It seems particularly important these difficult days to practice deep listening especially when we are just getting to know someone and their politics. What if our opinions are deeply held and divisive? The tenor of conversation must remain respectful if we are to remain at peace with ourselves and one another.
Tea and empathy. Talk less, listen more. These are my mantras as I interview people, run a writing workshop, or cultivate a new friendship. Though we have no need of bomb shelters in upstate New York, and hopefully never will, we are enduring internecine warfare, gunshots ringing out across a peaceful suburb in the dead of night, hatreds old and new ascendant even among relatives, friends and colleagues. How easy it is for fury to turn violent, three-time poet laureate Joy Harjo reminds us in her poem, "Overwhelm." She warns that a country that "drinks from illusion," can "go down."
Listening to a Haaretz podcast this morning, I heard a still sane reporter gasp for breath as he used what Aldous Huxley called "pleasant sounding vocabulary" to describe mass murder in Gaza and a missile attack on Haifa. After a while I did not hear this reporter's words, I felt his breath, escaping from his chest with a hiss, like steam. He was burning up inside.
Even in the safe enclave where I live, I encounter hatred daily. There is shouting and accusation, racialized slurs, and palpable fear. A man at a dinner party challenges what I have written and misunderstands my intention: to describe accurately, to report deeply, to understand a different point of view and analyze it with discipline and attention. I receive belligerent emails and delete them, turn my back on rage, move sideways out of range. Hatred is not sustainable. If it persists, we will annihilate each other.