Some days you think you know it all, and then you learn that you don't.
I feel like I’m on a journey of “gathering perspective” or “seeing both sides” these days. It’s so odd to be that I’m having these very clear learning/teaching experiences back to back. I had one just yesterday, Tuesday at my house here in LA. Being in California during “these days” these days being Trump, Weinstein, Kevin Spacey days, and all the other major issues that are coming to the surface of our world lately. I’ve had some interesting conversations the past twenty four hours, but one that really stuck out to me, was the one that took place between me and the locksmith who has been working on our house since we bought it. To give you some back story on how I ended up hanging with my locksmith on this trip is this: my Sunday night here began with my key getting stuck in the lock cylinder of my front door. It was 10pm, dark, I was exhausted from a whirlwind weekend, and I could not for the life of me get my key out of my front door. I tried for thirty minutes; I called a few local “emergency” lock smiths, since I know my regular guy is too far away from me, only to be told they’re “technically” not emergency lock smiths.
????
So you advertise that way, because why? For shits and giggles? To really mess with people who are in an emergency lock situation? I don’t get it, and I told every single one of them exactly that, and then promptly hung up without saying goodbye. Ridiculous business practice. Anyway, this isn’t even the point of the post, I apologize for my digression. The point is I finally called my guy, Nir, at 10:30pm. He answered right away and walked me through how to get the stuck key out of the lock, so that I didn’t have to sleep with it in the door. Once we handled that we then booked for him to come fix it on Tuesday. While he was here, as it is known to do these days in America, the conversation turned to politics and all that that covers: the shooting in Vegas, women’s health care, and Obamacare to name a few.
Speaking with Nir, who, it must be noted, is not a Trump fan, made many solid arguments to get me to stop and question my position and thoughts on #45. Nir, whom I’ve known since I bought this house, whom I respect and trust, is a Jewish man who immigrated from Israel when he was a small boy, and his perspective about what’s going on here opened my eyes to some things that I haven’t been getting from my news sources that I follow.
When I brought up the hot topics of all the white supremacists and gun violence, then asked him what he thought about these issues said:
a) the number of people that make up Nazi groups are not enough to worry or concern him. The stats, which he gave me that I cannot remember average something like .003 of the population of America, so he’s not worried about them. With regards to guns, and controlling them he came back at me with this: His great grandparents were in the same concentration camp, they were the only survivors of their entire families. She was one of 12, her husband was one of 7 kids. They didn’t meet until after the left the camp. He says the first thing the Nazis did in Germany was strip all the citizens of their guns. This is why, he, a man who served in the Israeli army is pro-gun. He did admit he thinks they have a crises with how guns are being used in America, but he as an American citizen has no issue with guns. Me, I still don’t buy into the gun craze no matter what anybody tells me.
Next on my hit list topic, healthcare, he responded with this:
b) he shared that prior to Obamacare his health insurance for his entire family, they’re a family of six goes up 22% every single year. He now pays, under the Obamacare act, for the level of coverage that his family needs to be prepared for any and all potential health emergencies or crisis, $2200 a month. Every single month. To be clear I pay for Mikaela’s health care while she goes to school here in LA and it costs us $2600/year. This also affords an emergency room visit that cost us only $30 the other night, and we were in and out of the clinic in under one hour. Tests completed and results given. So who’s really winning here. I get to pay $2600 a year for one person, my friend has to pay $2200 per month so those who don’t/can’t afford health care get it. Not gonna lie that seems shady, and unfair to me.
We talked about many more things, but it wasn’t the topic of conversation that got me, it was the sense that maybe I need to slow down on my opinions and spreading them so quickly without a full understanding of the issue, not unlike the marketing drama. Maybe this is my week of gaining new perspectives, I don’t know what’s going on, but it seems that the universe has given me some pretty clear indicators that I need to be sure to look at both sides of a coin before drawing my own conclusions. Not to say that I can’t have my own thoughts, opinions and ideas, but maybe, just maybe check some outside my zone sources before putting them out into the world might not be such a bad habit to get in to. Just saying.
