The Heart is on the Left: Be a Fountain, not a Drain

This past year has been difficult for me, as I described in another recent post. In fact, the past 10 years have been very difficult, as I have watched our political scene devolve into a hellscape fueled by greed, egotism and ignorance. I am sure that most of my friends can relate to that.

But I will tell you what: Life is really difficult for women, who bear the brunt of abuse from men, and the dual burdens of childrearing and work for the most part, while often having their needs ignored, as men hold the real power in society.

You know what else, “women of color” bear a real “double whammy.” Just look at the way that Donald Trump treats them. They are disrespected and disempowered, treated like second class citizens all too often.

This society is hard on men, for sure. They are under constant pressure and asked to live up to expectations that are often unreasonable. It’s doubly hard on Black men, and Hispanic men (who have to watch out for ICE these days. Asian men are well known for feeling under tremendous pressure, plus they also have to watch out for ICE nowadays.

Then there is the MAGA base of aggrieved, middle aged, non-college educated white guys. They clearly think that they have been given a raw deal, and perhaps they have, even if they misidentify the source of their problems.

This is a hard time to be a kid, for sure, with all the changes and chaos society is going through. Many kids come from single-parent homes these days, adding to their stress, and many have seen their parents get divorced.

My aunt Marthe, for that matter, once told me that she felt sorry for me because I was a teacher. This must be a difficult era to be a teacher, she said, and I couldn’t disagree with her.

God knows it’s a difficult time to be a teenager. If anything, teenagerhood is probably even more troublesome now as when I was a teenager, and full of dilemmas, and it sucked when I was a teenager.

But you know what really sucks: Growing old.

Have I left anyone out? Can you guess where this post is leading?

Well, life it difficult – for everyone. I think that is a fact of life that few if any of us can escape, but that is just the preface to the point that I want to make. (This is not to discount the fact that life is more difficult for some people than others, but to acknowledge that we all face difficulties.)

As the title says, “Be a Fountain, Not a Drain.” You may have heard that saying somewhere, as I have. I have taken that to heart, and indeed, I think it is central to the “Heart is on the Left” theme.

Drain people are people who make life harder for other people – think Trump, his toadies, and people like Elon Musk or Stephen Miller, for instance, among others. They tend to be narcissistic, and conservative. These people feed their egos by draining the lifeforce from other people (and “sucking the oxygen out of the room.”) All too often, they are overly wealthy, and overly powerful, tragically.

These are the people that we should never willingly let slither their way into positions of power. We should never vote for such people, and furthermore, should consistently warn people of the dangers of letting these people make decisions that impact the rest of us, because those decisions will be done from a place of egotism and greed, which will result in great harm to society.

Fountain people, in contrast to drain people, work to make life easier for other people. They tend to be liberal in their outlook, and work for the common good. Thus, they make decisions from a place of empathy and compassion, and wanting what’s best for the people as a whole. Fountain people want progress and the spreading of good ideas. Progressive policies, which most people agree upon, are all based on advancing the greater good of society, which are a natural result of being guided by empathy and compassion for other people, rather than acting from a place of self-centeredness.

Drain people discount empathy and compassion (as Elon Musk, among others, have actually said). If they do talk about feeling sympathy for other people, it’s not sincere. Rather, it’s an act to gain support, as conmen regularly do. Trump operates that way at times, but his disdain for the wellbeing of others is very evident nonetheless in his actions and insults. As I often told my psychology classes, empathetic people do not do bad things to other people, but people who lack empathy, usually do harm others.

We must guard ourselves against becoming a “Drain People,” and aspire to be “Fountain People” at all times. “Fountain People” operate from the heart, nurturing empathy and compassion, with hopefully appropriate cooperation from our rational minds.
When society advances, it is because of the fountains that we create. We need to send the “Drain People” who have captured the mechanisms of wealth and power in this era, down the proverbial “drain.”

And let us turn our wells of understanding into fountains of progress.