Who knows how long ago now – decades – my Mother said something that stuck with me. She told me that you don’t have to like someone to love them. Seems simple…like, duh, when I say it now. But it profoundly changed my relationships as a young woman. It gave me so much freedom. I loved my family; I still do – although only a few of us are still here, and we are almost strangers. But I don’t like them. I don’t think I ever did. And I don’t think they liked me.

Among her many wise comments, thrown casually off the cuff in conversations, my Mother also said to me one day, “I know for a fact that all five of my children have the same two parents – and I cannot understand how they can all be so different.” Listen up, Gabor Mate.

We are so different. In our values, in our beliefs, in our view of the world. Learning styles. Lifestyle preferences – everything from sexual orientation to religion to politics to food preferences – in most every way. We even remember the same shared events entirely differently. My parents were married for 27 years; they raised we five children together. Same house, same schools, many of the same teachers. Same neighbors, same family friends. We vacationed together with the same families every summer. Five children. Five entirely different childhoods.

We have very little in common. We are not a lot alike. We look alike. I look so strikingly like my paternal grandmother that I was once stopped on Front Street in downtown Traverse City years ago by a complete stranger who asked if I were related to her. She had long been deceased, and her old friend thought she was seeing a ghost. I have dozens of living relatives in the area but I have never met most of them. To be honest, I don’t know that I would ever want to meet them…can you imagine how different we might be?!

So to say that I have always felt an outsider is a gross understatement. I was, in fact, an outsider in my own world in every way. The only unconditional love I ever felt was from my mother and her mother. I’ll take it. In fact it has been the only – even slight – sense of acceptance I have ever felt, with the exception of my son and less than a handful of close friends over the years. Now, before this registers as sad, let me say that it is a tremendous blessing. I’ve only come to see that as an adult, and increasingly so the past few decades, but it most certainly has always served me well. I do like myself as well as love myself.

I don’t think my parents or siblings ever knew that perspective, or ever will. I think they have spent their lives in self loathing. That isn’t a question any of them would ever think to ask themselves. Not only are they uninterested in any self reflection, but they would object if presented with the idea. Either they are narcissistic, and obviously superior to you for posing such a vapid concept…or, it couldn’t possibly matter less – as long as they have accepted Jesus as their savior. Either way, no need for such silliness. No self examination going on here, thank you very much.

I say that as someone who knows self loathing well. And where it will take you. I say that with the compassion that fills every cell of my being for all time. Nothing – absolutely nothing but humility and respect for the overwhelmingly daunting task of learning to love yourself. Really. Not admiring yourself. I don’t admire myself. I’m not proud. I’m humbled and consumed with gratitude. My life is so, so easy compared to theirs.

It brings me around to this idea of deservedness. We all deserve some happiness. We all deserve peace. Wellbeing. Every sentient life on earth deserves that. It is our nature. It is what the planet is for. But the man-made – quite frankly – cultural teaching of deservedness? Well, that, my friends, is quite the sham. A bill of goods. The founding fathers of the U.S. were very intelligent men. They got a whole helluva lot of it wrong. Just dead wrong. And I am their direct descendent, so perhaps I am uniquely qualified in some way to say this: I would very much like to start this experiment over.

Let’s start with giving the land back to the people it belonged to in the first place, before we “discovered” it. And then – radical notion it seems – let’s see if there is anything we might learn from them. I mean, before we barged in and slaughtered them. Oops.

Here’s an experiment for you – let’s put the descendants of the slaves in power for awhile. You think they’d do worse? I think we whiteys would be damn lucky if they didn’t enslave and slaughter all of us. You want to talk about deserving?! Try that scenario on. Do you think we would deserve forgiveness? Because I don’t. That does not mean that I identify with guilt, because I don’t. That isn’t denial. I forgave myself – I gave my self forth. I changed. It was not easy; in fact I had to sacrifice everything. Every belief – just for starters. Everything I thought was safety. I saw through it. And I wanted real safety – the only safety worth having – the safety of defenselessness. The minute you perceive a need to defend you are not free. You are not safe. That is only one of the reasons you will never see me at a protest march (not because I’ve had an FBI file since 1968 for such things) – what you resist persists. That’s not an Oprah Winfrey euphemism. It’s over simplified truth.

Pardon me if my radical self is showing. I’ll tell you what we all deserve, big time. And NOW. We deserve rest. We deserve peace.

In a recent phone conversation my friend and I were talking about how different the world was when we were growing up. Ya’ know, like the memes. Land lines instead of cell phones, etc…and I remembered getting a letter from the DAR before my 18th birthday. They were courting me. And I had no idea who they really were or what they practiced. There was no internet! I went to the library. Spoke to the librarian – in a respectful manner, because respect. If I remember correctly I also contacted The Detroit News asking for articles to read about them. And drove downtown to pick them up, because no internet. I had to do my homework before I decided hell to the no.

My Mother was disappointed. She did so want to belong. And after all, I had already refused a coming out party at the yacht club. I didn’t attend prom. I just didn’t seem to want to fit in. I was a disappointment. But at a deeper level, she got it. This was the woman who gave me two books for my birthday that year (my father gave me a car): The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, and The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. She wasn’t getting free, but maybe her daughter had a fighting chance. And the television was our downfall, America….hahhahaaaa….and in case you think I might lose any of my radical nature in my old age? Nah, I love AI. Bring it on. The human race needs a smarter ruler. We can only hope it gets so smart that it becomes sentient by next week.