tolerence

I lurk on a newsgroup for our local SCA group. Once upon a time, I was an officer, and had many friends in the group who have since moved on, in one way or another. I haven't been able to make myself go hang out with these new people until they are my friends. I'm sure they are perfectly nice people, and the fault is definitely not with them, but with me. You see, I'm a Taurus, and we don't let go of people easily, and I'm still healing from the "mass exodus" - my own included. This is - of course - totally off the subject. For the past couple of weeks, the e-mails in that group have been fast and furious and ended up being rather intolerant, with various people taking offense and firing back and the escalation got to be enough that I just deleted many without reading them.

Elections this year are much on people's minds, and were woven into parts of the above thread. The intolerance associated with these elections - and I mean in general. I've heard many wild opinions from a wide variety of otherwise reasonable seeming people. No, I'm not going to name names, and no I'm not going to repeat the opinions. Still, I have to wonder where the tolerance is.

I also have some friends who want to be legally married, but they must travel to California to do it, so that it will be legal, at least in that state. Perhaps in time, the state they live in will recognize their marriage, and they will be afforded the rights of other legally married couples. I hope so. I hope I live to see the day, and celebrate with them and for them. Others, I know will not look at my friends for the kind and good, loving people they are. I wish tolerance from those people.

Where does the tolerance come from? Where does it go? Must we sacrifice drawing the line between good and evil so that we may tolerate the variety that IS the human race? Where is this race without that variety? We must have evil to know good, but must we batter the good in the pursuit of the evil? Answers I do not have.