My father was Muslim. My mother is Christian. Early on in their marriage, they decided their love was more important than their respective religions, to never fight over it, to expose their children to both, and let them decide.
By the time I was five years old, I realized my parents worshiped different gods. By seven years old, I started to wonder which one of them was right. By nine years old I’d begun to wonder if both of them were wrong.
By the time I was ten years old I started to wonder what else they might be wrong about.
By age 13 I’d read the Bible and the Qu’ran from cover to cover. By 15 I’d read the To’rah and the Pentateuch. By 17 I’d read the Tao Te Ching, the Five Rings, and the Bhagavad Gita.
It wasn’t until my 30s that I began to study quantum physics, and realized that the ancient mystics had figured out through meditation what modern science discerned through experiment.
By the time I was ten years old I started to wonder what else they might be wrong about.
All of this is to say: none of us had a choice about the parents we were raised to, the area of the world we were born, the genitals or genetics we were given, the religion we were taught, the schools we were sent to, the systems of wealth or poverty we inherited. As adults, we get to choose. We get to critically examine everything we were taught during our developmental years, and consciously decide what works and what doesn’t.
If you’ve been adult longer than you were a child, you’ve had a long time to unpack this stuff. Hopefully if you’re reading this, you’ll come to the same conclusion my parents did: we can fight about the small stuff ad infinitum and rip ourselves asunder, or we can figure how to love each other through our (sometimes not insignificant) differences.
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