Once again it's the season of separating the gold from fool's gold as political parties look for their most promising leader to offer to the country to be president of the American people. If there is a season for asking what truth and integrity look like, as well as civility, those questions are surely being asked right now. One thing is certain — it's the season for having your brain boggled by what political aficionados attempt to pass off as all of the above.
Webster's Dictionary tells us that civility means being courteous. It is politeness. I think of it also as respect that keeps barbs and sarcasm from even affectations of courtesy and politeness. Recently, while listening to a particularly vocal panel talking over each other until I made use of the mute button, I suddenly had the recollection of a bunch of elementary school children taunting someone when I was a kid.
Whether it is elementary school children who haven't yet lived long enough to discern the difference between the rational exchange of ideas in discourse and attempting to subdue another — verbally or otherwise — out of fear of losing power, the loss of civility is an ugly thing. I, for one, hope for honest discourse between adults, no matter what the subject. And when I see the pansies blooming still while holding high a cloak of frost or snow, it brings a smile and reawakens my faith in the way even our treatment of each other can change.
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PANSY
Pansy!
A taunt,
a derisive term
When we were school children
it branded one weak,
spineless, a coward.
Don't you believe it!
Not for a single breath.
What hearty spirits!
Pansies wear richest velvets
ruffled and full
purple, burgundy and Midas gold
in the most miserable weather.
Unbowed in cloudbursts
or blizzards,
their blooms persevere
beneath the heaviest
frost or snow cloaks.
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Newsman Ted Koppel, has said, "Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid standard of morality to your lives. And if, periodically, you fail as you surely will, adjust your lives, not the standards."
From where I stand, admiring the pansies, that's wise advice.
