On the Comfort of Enemies
It is easier to speak in absolutes, to categorize people into good and bad. To divide the world into us and them, the wise and the misled, the smart and the foolish. If I partition the world this way, the equation becomes simpler — and safer too. Because uncertainty is uncomfortable. Perhaps the most uncomfortable of all human experiences. Clear-cut groups, well-defined tribes, unambiguous villains. Like this, things are easier. Suddenly the world makes sense. I know who I am because I know who I am not.
But this safety is an illusion. If the world is a struggle between good and evil, it follows that what is evil must be defeated, converted, or destroyed. Eternal war. No resting state.
Perhaps maturity begins the moment I become capable of holding contradictory realities without needing to resolve them. Yes, the person in front of me may be a Fidesz voter, an opposition supporter, a liberal, a conservative, Hungarian, Roma, Jewish — or anyone else — but first and foremost they are still a human being. A mortal, suffering, anxious human being. Am I capable of recognizing their basic human dignity? Even when their politics differ from mine, their background, their ethnicity? Am I capable of seeing that even in this person there is something good, something worthy of respect?
And if I find myself incapable of that — is it the world I fear, or myself?