The Road to Joy is not without its detours.
My son Julian has decided to estrange himself from me as well as his entire family. This has been a long time coming. I’ve spent the last two years trying to understand his and his partner’s judgement against us, and my incomprehension only further inflamed the tension. The best I can do is this; Anyone who at this point is not declaring that the State of Israel must cease to exist is a Zionist, and anyone who accepts such a person is therefore complicit of supporting racist/apartheid policies and should be considered morally deficient and scorned. I fall in the latter category, and because I don’t feel shame or remorse for who I choose to associate with, my son will not associate with me. it’s not enough that I and his family agree with him and his partner that Israel’s devastation of Gaza is abhorrent and constitutes attempted genocide.
I share this because I’ve felt a stark contrast between the wonderful experiences I’ve had on my journey and the pain of losing my son’s estimation of me as a good person. It almost feels disingenuous to describe the joy of being in nature without mentioning my countless sleepless nights perseverating how to change his mind about me.
I didn’t expect to have to develop the resilience to grieve losing Sharon as well as my son’s love. But I have. I see very clearly I am powerless to change his assessment of me, and I cannot change how I choose to be with people in order to satisfy someone else, even someone I love with all my heart. The AA Serenity Prayer comes to mind.
Through all of this, I’ve been relegated to only using texting to communicate. After one particularly strident exchange, I wanted to share the pain I was feeling, but didn’t want to reveal our conflict directly in the blog. I wrote Suffering and Time mostly for Julian to know my mind, that I was in fact reflecting deeply on our issues, but I framed it around the violence and suffering in our own country’s history. He was still subscribed at the time. It was not received well. He felt it was performative and wrong.
None of this is to garner sympathy for me or judgement of Julian. He cares so deeply and is supremely frustrated his family and others don’t seem to be demonstrating enough outrage at the insanity in this one particular place in the world. At any level of engagement, it could be argued we should all be doing more. Where we differ is in our approach. Julian feels the right action (around the Israel/Palestine conflict) is to remove himself on principle from someone he feels is wrong, and I feel it’s important to maintain dialogue while treating the other person with respect and dignity, no matter how vehemently I disagree. Unfortunately for me, Julian feels “agreeing to disagree” is also wrong, hence his estrangement.
Because his last text was clear he wanted no further contact unless I understood that associating with someone who is pro-Israel (even if they don’t support the actions of the government) is associating with a Nazi, I feel there’s nothing to lose in sharing our conflict openly.
I may not bring this up again. But I wanted to share the whole picture. I’m very, very sad. But I’m also full with gratitude, and yes, even joy. Joy encompasses and embraces sorrow, and I can accept how things are and keep moving, detours or not.