Why Can't We Be Friends?

I am an adamant listener of several different podcasts. Some are of science and new technology, others are of new media, and some are even about philosophy and the paranormal. In some of these podcasts they discuss the likelihood of world peace, solving the planet’s energy crisis, and surviving world climate change, and I think, is this even possible. Can the world work together? Can we coexist long enough to save ourselves? I am skeptical. Looking back to our people’s history it is evident that one of our favorite pastimes is fighting. We’ve pretty much done it since day one, and it doesn’t look like we’re about to stop any time soon.

Some say that to get along the world first must be united under a common goal. Something has to happen to pull the world together, but what? What if, as an example, a UFO landed on the White House Lawn? Unless they landed there with the intention of enslaving the entire planet, I doubt anyone would be able to agree on what to do. I’m sure some people would be interested on studying them, and others would be after their knowledge and secrets. I think any religious fanatic of any are of the world would want to kill them. No, unless they were trying to destroy us, we would still fight each other, and I’m sure their presence would only make things worse. Unfortunately, the diversity and varying levels of education in the world are too great for any of us to get along. However, I think there is a solution: empathy and common ground.

A few weeks ago my sister, my brother, and I hosted a party. It was the kind of party that saw the walls bursting from the volume of the stereo, and the floors drooping from the amount of people standing on it. Yes, it was a raging party, unfortunately at these kinds of parties there tends to be one or more people in the mood to fight. We surely would have seen a couple if it hadn’t been for my outstanding mediating skills. Close to the end of the night a few of my sister’s friends wanted to fight my buddy, Pavel. In fact, they had taken something he had said so badly that they were priming themselves to lead him outside and actually take him on. The funny thing was, the entire time they were talking about fighting him he was trying to apologize and avoid that scenario. All of his words, of course, fell on deaf ears because something about their way of thinking told my sister’s friends that they had to fight. Since then, I’ve been mulling the night over in my mind trying to understand why everyone wanted to do battle so badly, and I think I finally got it. My sister’s friends wanted to fight for the same reason the world will never get along: no one can see eye to eye.

I am a pacifist, and it is not because I’m not that strong of very tough, it’s because I feel I am able to empathize with people. I think, while every individual is unique, there are similar things in each of us. We have the same emotions; we all have the capacity to fear, and hate, and ability to love, and to feel happiness. I think if everyone could only learn to see things from other’s perspectives all this fighting could be avoided. However, until that day the enlightened among us can only sit back and ask, why can’t we be friends?

Next time you feel like you could punch someone out, or tear their head off, or do any other similar act of violence towards them stop and ask yourself, why can’t we be friends? What about this person is so bad that you have to fight them, and is there any way to look past it? And if this person really is that terrible, why are you even wasting your time with them? Surely you could save yourself a headache, and maybe some bruises, if you just walked away. But then again, maybe all this fighting is out of our hands; maybe it is implanted in our genes. Either way, I’m of the opinion that life is too short to fight. What is your opinion?

Daniel Chambers