Jackpot.
I was looking through online listings of holidays and celebrations as I often do (hey, I'd been stuck in the house a long time, I'm sure there were worse ways to amuse myself). Sometimes I just end up laughing, but often I find inspiration. I've written about Cow Appreciation Day, Lost Sock Memorial Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day and even Clean Out Your Fridge Day.
But today, July 7th, today turned out to offer an abundance of celebrations. It is:
Tell the Truth Day
Global Forgiveness Day
and
World Chocolate Day
I can work with that.
As I often do, I ran the idea for today's post by some fellow bloggers, and some of them thought they might like to join in. Diane was first (as she so frequently is, ❤ you, Diane), she and I decided to take the day full on, we'd be addressing all three "holidays". Others may choose one of them, or even two. Either way, I'm looking forward to reading what they've written. Their links are at the end of my post, I hope you'll head over there too.
How I view truth has changed a lot in the age of coronavirus. Truth, or the need to tell it, is not absolute, there are levels. The well used example of "do I look fat in this dress?" doesn't necessarily require the same level of truth as "did you eat the last cookie?" And the repercussions of an untruthful response to "did you eat the last cookie?" holds nowhere near the level of ramifications associated with a federal dishonest response to questions about the number of US cases of coronavirus, or whether it'll just go away on its own or that it's encouraged to take an anti-malaria drug for someone without malaria, or whether or not we should look into inject humans with lysol, or if the actual number of cases we have is tied to the amount of testing we do.
What did Kellyanne Conway say? There can be alternative facts? Not in situations of consequence, not in the case of life and death. No. Truth has no politics, and when we treat it like it does? Worst case scenario, people die. That's how far a country that was a stalwart defender of human rights has sunk.
Truth matters. Duh. I used to say to my boys "before you do anything, think about whether you'd be willing to admit to it. If not, that's a pretty good indication that you shouldn't do it." I thought that made a lot of sense. For kids being raised to have a conscience, yes. But our current batch of politicians have forced me to look at that advice differently. It's a whole new level of immorality to act in a harmful way comfortable knowing you can just lie about it. How did lying become a viable option? How is this our current culture?
The only way I can see out of this division, the only path forward for us as a country, is forgiveness.
There was one clear vision for this country. We may have disagreed on a myriad of issues, but we had our freedom and our morals and our values to unite us. This is no longer true. There are now two visions for this country, resulting in what I now see as us being embroiled in a civil war. We're never going to agree, as I said, we never have, but can we build a future that we can all live with?
It's going to take forgiveness.
Let's not sugar coat this (warning, cookie reference), forgiveness from a place of anger and hurt and distrust (and disgust) is laborious and grueling and exhausting in practice.
Can we do it? As a country? I'm just not sure. It's a process, and I have to admit I'm not there myself. But I'm trying very hard to take steps. Just like with truth, I see levels in the ability to forgive as well. On a micro level, when friends post statuses to FB that I find selfish or uncaring or untrue, I unfollow them for a while, not unfriend, just unfollow. The respite from seeing these posts, for me, is the foundation of forgiveness. I reserve the right to like them again another day.
When I observe store mandates to wear a mask, go up some aisles and down others, and social distance, I am showing respect. When someone targets me, comes down the "up" aisle without a mask to stand shoulder to shoulder with me, well that's not just refusing to follow precautions, it's actively aggressive. Forgiveness of this level of behavior requires a more concerted effort.
When someone refuses to take precautions, they are literally taking others' lives in their hands. If it were to turn out that they're right and we should believe politicians, not doctors, and didn't actually have to take precautions, by doing so we haven't harmed anyone. But if I'm right and we should believe the scientists and wear masks and social distance, they could be killing people. So when the man on a recent flight to Boston who sat directly behind my mother refused the airline's attempts to get him to wear a mask, I'm not quite able to forgive. Same with the airline, btw. I wonder how I will ever forgive people whose selfishness allows them to recklessly jeopardizing my mother's life.
I was looking through online listings of holidays and celebrations as I often do (hey, I'd been stuck in the house a long time, I'm sure there were worse ways to amuse myself). Sometimes I just end up laughing, but often I find inspiration. I've written about Cow Appreciation Day, Lost Sock Memorial Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day and even Clean Out Your Fridge Day.
But today, July 7th, today turned out to offer an abundance of celebrations. It is:
Tell the Truth Day
Global Forgiveness Day
and
World Chocolate Day
I can work with that.
As I often do, I ran the idea for today's post by some fellow bloggers, and some of them thought they might like to join in. Diane was first (as she so frequently is, ❤ you, Diane), she and I decided to take the day full on, we'd be addressing all three "holidays". Others may choose one of them, or even two. Either way, I'm looking forward to reading what they've written. Their links are at the end of my post, I hope you'll head over there too.
How I view truth has changed a lot in the age of coronavirus. Truth, or the need to tell it, is not absolute, there are levels. The well used example of "do I look fat in this dress?" doesn't necessarily require the same level of truth as "did you eat the last cookie?" And the repercussions of an untruthful response to "did you eat the last cookie?" holds nowhere near the level of ramifications associated with a federal dishonest response to questions about the number of US cases of coronavirus, or whether it'll just go away on its own or that it's encouraged to take an anti-malaria drug for someone without malaria, or whether or not we should look into inject humans with lysol, or if the actual number of cases we have is tied to the amount of testing we do.
What did Kellyanne Conway say? There can be alternative facts? Not in situations of consequence, not in the case of life and death. No. Truth has no politics, and when we treat it like it does? Worst case scenario, people die. That's how far a country that was a stalwart defender of human rights has sunk.
Truth matters. Duh. I used to say to my boys "before you do anything, think about whether you'd be willing to admit to it. If not, that's a pretty good indication that you shouldn't do it." I thought that made a lot of sense. For kids being raised to have a conscience, yes. But our current batch of politicians have forced me to look at that advice differently. It's a whole new level of immorality to act in a harmful way comfortable knowing you can just lie about it. How did lying become a viable option? How is this our current culture?
The only way I can see out of this division, the only path forward for us as a country, is forgiveness.
There was one clear vision for this country. We may have disagreed on a myriad of issues, but we had our freedom and our morals and our values to unite us. This is no longer true. There are now two visions for this country, resulting in what I now see as us being embroiled in a civil war. We're never going to agree, as I said, we never have, but can we build a future that we can all live with?
It's going to take forgiveness.
Let's not sugar coat this (warning, cookie reference), forgiveness from a place of anger and hurt and distrust (and disgust) is laborious and grueling and exhausting in practice.
Can we do it? As a country? I'm just not sure. It's a process, and I have to admit I'm not there myself. But I'm trying very hard to take steps. Just like with truth, I see levels in the ability to forgive as well. On a micro level, when friends post statuses to FB that I find selfish or uncaring or untrue, I unfollow them for a while, not unfriend, just unfollow. The respite from seeing these posts, for me, is the foundation of forgiveness. I reserve the right to like them again another day.
When I observe store mandates to wear a mask, go up some aisles and down others, and social distance, I am showing respect. When someone targets me, comes down the "up" aisle without a mask to stand shoulder to shoulder with me, well that's not just refusing to follow precautions, it's actively aggressive. Forgiveness of this level of behavior requires a more concerted effort.
When someone refuses to take precautions, they are literally taking others' lives in their hands. If it were to turn out that they're right and we should believe politicians, not doctors, and didn't actually have to take precautions, by doing so we haven't harmed anyone. But if I'm right and we should believe the scientists and wear masks and social distance, they could be killing people. So when the man on a recent flight to Boston who sat directly behind my mother refused the airline's attempts to get him to wear a mask, I'm not quite able to forgive. Same with the airline, btw. I wonder how I will ever forgive people whose selfishness allows them to recklessly jeopardizing my mother's life.
And if forgiveness is difficult on a personal level, burdensome on a local level, and grueling on a federal level, what would global forgiveness take?
If we want to save this planet, we need to start thinking along those lines.
In the meantime, at least there's chocolate.
Or is there?
I've mentioned many, many times lately that I've had to change my husband's diet. He needs to eat much lower in fat and I'm watching how much sugar I use too. Since I wouldn't (well, mostly) eat the foods he loves but can't have in front of him, how I cook, bake, and eat has changed as well.
But. But. Chocolate! {{sob}}.
I've been doing a lot of baking with fruit, which we've been very happy with, but oh how we both miss chocolate. I now spend about an hour or two a day researching articles about gallbladder attacks, fat and sugar substitutes, and have even made a list of how many grams of saturated fats there are in 1 TBSP of all of my go-to cookie mix-ins. Turns out you can use cocoa in baking to satisfy that chocolate craving, and mini baking M&Ms have the lowest saturated fat content of my mix-ins. I've made some other fat and sugar substitutes in these Midnight M&M Cookies, which definitely change the consistency, but . . . chocolate . . .
Midnight M&M (lower fat) Cookies
Truth is, I would give up chocolate completely, would forgo almost anything, if it meant helping to keep others safe.
And if more people could say that, there'd be so much less I'd have to try to forgive.
Before you go, click on these links to read more posts using today's theme(s):
Diane of On the Border shares Truth, Forgiveness . . . and Chocolate.
Jenn of Sparkly Poetic Weirdo shares Truth, Forgiveness and Chocolate.
Jenn of Sparkly Poetic Weirdo shares Truth, Forgiveness and Chocolate.
Midnight M&M Cookies
©www.BakingInATornado.comPrintable Recipe
Ingredients (makes about 40):
2 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cup baking cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp instant coffee granules
1 cup canola oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup mini M&Ms
Directions:
*Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cover baking sheets with parchment paper.
*In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking cocoa, salt, baking soda, and coffee granules.
*In a smaller bowl, whisk together the canola oil, maple syrup, brown sugar and eggs. Mix into the larger bowl and once completely incorporated, mix in the mini M&Ms.
*Roll into 1 inch balls, flatten slightly and bake for 10 minutes.
