The rainbow flag is everywhere. I thought, “What can I say about that? I’m not going to write about that, I guess,” but even here on WordPress the rainbow stripes are up there.

I accept the rainbow stripes. Down the street, some neighbors fly a rainbow flag. Past the house walk our Muslim neighbors. People walk past, walking dogs, walking each other. We ride bikes around the neighborhood, down to the Thursday night Pasar Malam (“night market,” as Malaysians say). People generally find all this acceptable.

Maybe that person passing by is gay. Maybe that person is a conservative Muslim, a conservative Jew, a conservative Christian, a conservative Buddhist. Maybe that person was 16 when the Beatles played at the Seattle Center. Maybe that person lives in that house with those weird gigantic plants in the front yard.

Hard as it can be, as loath as one is to have his motives questioned, one can smile and say “Hello” if your paths cross as you walk down the street. Neighborliness can be contagious. It’s a simple expression of acceptance, a way to express that one is content to live amidst the complexity of human experience as we increasingly know it.

As someone who everyday expects to be banished from society because of my social awkwardness and clumsiness, I say, if I’m a certain way, it’s just because, and why should anyone necessarily be the boss of anyone just because he is louder, or more simple-minded, or stronger, because he has the gun?

Why should a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, or a Hindu, or a Democrat, or a Republican, or a vegetarian, or a carnivore, or a Sounder or a Canuck or a Trailblazer hate somebody else? Every person is a variation on the same theme. What we know about another person is never enough to render judgment, but it should be enough that one can have compassion and acceptance that every person struggles with circumstances and not always as gracefully as one would hope.

We are lucky to be alive, lucky to live in a universe of infinite varieties of beauty and consciousness.

“By their fruits you shall know them,” He said. That bodes well for those who embrace the peaceful flag of the rainbow!