Relative Matters

I drove over to Tsawwassen today to do a little laundry. It does seem surprising that Point Roberts doesn’t have its own laundromat, given that so many of the houses here are quite small, cottages really, hard pressed to find room for big washing machines and dryers. On the other hand, the Tsawwassen laundromat is run by a couple from Lebanon and if one is interested in talking the middle east, he has a personal history that is worth hearing. Lebanon went through a 15-year civil war (the sequel to that seems to be in its opening scenes right now) and the laundromat owner was a teenager at the time of the first war. He has told me about going out and being part of the war when he was only 14. Perhaps he is exaggerating, perhaps not: I have no way to know. I can more easily imagine wanting to make a bigger thing of it than is true, than actually talking about it if I had done it.

In any case, seeing him, even when I don’t talk with him about the middle east, reminds me that every day in Lebanon, and Gaza, and Iraq, and the West Bank, and in Israel, real people, people like him and like me, are right now living in the middle of a war. Every week hundreds of people are killed or seriously injured, at least some of them with the compliments of my taxes. I think I fret about the price of gas or wheat or bread or apples because if I actually opened myself to the grim tragedies of choice that we are participants in, if only indirectly, or to the extraordinary tragedies of nature, like the Chinese earthquake and the Burmese cyclone, that are going on right this minute, I would sink into a slough of despair that would be hard to get up from.

When I went through the border today, there were about 35 cars in the standard line waiting to be spoken to by the Canadian border agents; when I came back, another 30+ were in line to hear from the U.S. border agents. In Iraq, the check points have people with guns who use them pretty easily, it appears. I once drove away from the Point Roberts border before I was told that I could; in the middle east, I suppose I would be a dead person now. The check points for Gaza and the West Bank are infinitely worse than anything this border could ever become, or at least that I could imagine it becoming, and I am grateful for that, but I am not grateful that others are required to submit to such injustices, such endless threats, disrespect, and violence. No Nexus Passes for the Iraqis or Palestinians, I'm afraid.

It’s a gray and a rainy day in Point Roberts and I have finished my dutiful work on past-time projects. Gasoline is $4.08/gallon, and the Canadians see it as a bargain. The relativity of so much of life may be the real lesson of age.