The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Jason Anderson of Bangor is a concerned citizen, husband, and father.
We live in a dizzying time — a time of incredible noise. Voices everywhere. So many things said, much of it said well and with conviction.
Yet, what we are lacking aren’t voices or conviction; it’s understanding — the kind that turns confusion into a livable perspective, one that helps us grow, improve, and become better.
That kind of understanding is built on trust. Trust in collective experience. Trust in shared wisdom and insight. Not blind trust. Honest, tested trust. When we listen with that kind of trust, we make sense of the world together. Understanding grows. Lives get better, and we do incredible things.
We need each other. We are a social species, safer and better when together — when we can be a group, when we can be a people. Alone, we are frail; our abilities pale beside the forces of the wider world and the universe. Together, we have bent those same forces, to a high degree, to serve us in remarkable ways.
But the same currents that make us great can make us terrible. When trust is broken, never built or perceived as impossible, we draw lines. We separate. We vilify. We start calling each other competitors, rivals, and, too quickly, enemies, and from there we do unspeakable, unconscionable things. Usually out of fear.
Throughout the history of humanity to today, and tragically for too many tomorrows ahead, war, violence, murder, abuse, trauma, starvation, disease, hunger, thirst, deceit, terror, and the cruelty of a blind eye have been inflicted with everything from cunning, targeted precision to indiscriminate, obscene, careless arrogance — between individuals to incalculable masses — brought on by fear.
Fear that, if not done to them, it would be done to us. Fear that, if not done, control would be lost. Fear that inwardly known failings would be exposed.
At the core of the worst of us lives our fear. Fear of what we don’t understand. Fear of experiences we haven’t lived. Fear of other ways of doing things. Fear of things not being simple. Fear of being wrong. Fear that there isn’t enough. Fear that we aren’t keeping up. Fear of a score no one is keeping. Fear that we are not living up to the expectations of others — living or long since gone. Fear of letting go of a past that can never be in our future.
There is not a human being on this earth for whom you cannot, on one hand, find fault — even to hate — and, on the other hand, find virtue and goodness, common ground, friendship, and even companionship. The lenses that force us to see each other as enemies are constructs — narrow, incorrect frames that crush the vast, beautiful complexity of life into a thin, false, made‑up view.
So we, as a people, need to get past fear. Face it. Name it. Move through it and choose a better way — a more hopeful way, a more productive way, a peaceful way. A way where trust builds understanding, an understanding that builds better lives. A way that leads us — individually and together — to something better than we are today.
We do not need more noise. We need more trust. Trust and effort that we are at least trying for understanding, an understanding that makes room for all of us.
In that understanding and growth, our best days are ahead.