Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be sharing stories here in the Daily Post about winter holiday events and celebrations in our little town of . An ‘Old Fashioned Christmas’ gathering along the downtown Riverwalk… a ‘Heralds of Christmas’ concert at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church… a production of ‘All is Calm’ at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts… the Festival of Trees at the Community Center… ‘Gifts of the Magi’ at the High School Auditorium… a moonlight cross-country skiing event at Cloman Park…
Certain things operate to unite the community at this time of year, as we approach 2024. Snow, for example. We wave to our neighbors, as we shovel our walkways in the wee hours of the morning… unified by a shared burden.
And also, by the shared burden of a tourism economy, failing roads, rising prices, and so on.
At the same time that we’re brought closer together by events and tasks, we can easily get swept up in choosing sides. When issues arise, there are always sides to choose.
Much of the coverage I come across in the mainstream media, these past few months, have involved choosing sides. Ukraine vs. Russia. Israel vs. Palestinians. Republicans vs. Democrats. Reproductive rights vs. right to life. Same-sex marriage vs. traditional marriage. Gun control vs. the Second Amendment.
An obvious response, being: Why can’t everyone just get along?
Really. Why can’t we?
That question knocks around in my head, on a regular basis… ever since I decided that Pagosa Springs needed a full-time gadfly to challenge the status quo at Town Hall… and at the Archuleta County admin building… and at the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation offices.. and at School Board meetings… anywhere that elected and appointed community members were making rules, and laws, and policies, about how we should live, and how our collective wealth should be spent.
As I perceive myself and my fellow humans — heck, as I perceive the whole realm of nature — the world seems to have two energy currents flowing through it.
Cooperation, and competition.
The drive to cooperate comes from our mutual dependence on, and affection for, one another. We desperately need each other. Few of us could survive as isolated hermits, voluntarily cut off from the rest of humanity — and even fewer choose to live that way. And those of us raised in the Judaeo-Christian tradition have been taught that we not only need our fellow humans, but that we are under an obligation to love them. As best we can.
This energy current can feel terribly wrong, of course — for example, if we become ‘co-dependent’ or when mutual affection goes astray and leads to otherwise unhappy outcomes.
Cooperation can be stressful, in other words.
Then we have the ‘opposite’ energy current: the drive to compete. The drive to engage ourselves in contests — maybe physically, maybe intellectually, maybe emotionally — to struggle for an outcome that we feel will serve us best… ‘Us’ meaning, in some cases, ourselves individually, or our immediate families… and in other cases, ‘Us’ as a community, or as a nation… or even, ‘Us’, as part of the global community of living things.
The drive to compete, to engage in contests, can easily become stressful — I’m thinking about the current political discord here in the U.S. — and even deadly, as we see in so many places around the world. Armies at war. Government leaders and drug cartels engaged in murder. Seemingly senseless mass shootings.
Competition can be handled badly, just as cooperation can be handled badly. But they can both be effective processes, each in its own way.
I have my ideas about same-sex marriage, and Israel, and gun control, and racism, and all the other contemporary issues that present us with the temptation to choose sides. But my power to affect the outcomes of those conflicts and controversies is practically non-existent, living as I do in a semi-isolated rural community in southern Colorado.
I’m comfortable, however, choosing sides on local issues. More than ‘comfortable’. I sometimes feel obliged to choose sides.
Why can’t we just get along? Because we have these two opposite energy currents running through us. We were born this way.
Ursala, my daughter, has been enjoying the physical challenges offered by our local ‘Crossfit’ gym; weight-lifting, increasing her flexibility, doing partner routines, engaging in friendly competitions with her friends. In fact, her pattern of workouts sounds like an attractive a mix of cooperation and competition.
I’m also attracted by the mix of cooperation and competition, but on the political plane. And that attraction has landed me here at the helm of the Daily Post, writing about Pagosa Springs, and decisions, made by our community leaders, that make our lives better, or make them worse.
We have both currents running through us. On the one hand, we do actually want to ‘just get along’, be agreeable, support the other guy’s idea, avoid raising questions.
But that’s only one side of the coin. The other side, being the desire to enter the ring, hopefully with the gloves on, and fight for what we believe in.
I’ve seen my share of community leaders ‘just getting along’ with each other, supporting the other guy’s idea without asking questions. No friction, no disagreement, no digging into the details. In some cases, that form of ‘just getting along’ has resulted in disastrous outcomes for Pagosa Springs.
Even though it can make things more complicated, less efficient, and less comfortable… choosing sides, when we’re faced with difficult decisions, can challenge us to consider a point of view other than our own, and think outside whatever box we’ve got ourselves stuck in.
Assuming we’re actually willing to engage, and listen.
Two things I’m still learning how to do.