Sometimes I find it hard in this life to do the right thing.
That is not always a bad thing. There is not one person alive or dead that
finds they do the right thing everyday. People are made to make mistakes, it is
in our nature to learn, to stumble, to look back and say “What the hell?!!?” I love how some people comment to me how I need to let go and pray on it, how Jesus was faultless and never wavered. But the thing is that is not true look at Matthew 26:39 “He went on a little farther and bowed his face to the ground,
praying. ‘My Father if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away
from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine’.”
Sometimes mistakes are what make us stronger…I find that
stumbling is something that is truly needed. If you need a cliché about it…look
at steel…if you take a piece of steel it can be easily broken and is not very
sturdy…however what really strengthens it is folding and forging. As the steel
is heated and folded and forged it becomes stronger and stronger making it
almost unbreakable. I think of life like this sometimes…I screw up, I get hurt
and I move on…each experience forging me into something new and able to
withstand more without breaking.
But this is a fine line too…I find myself becoming harder
and colder sometimes. There have been times in my life that I have done this so
cruel and despicable that I honestly can’t believe it was me that did these
things. It is almost as if I would be standing outside of myself looking on and
being amazed that I was capable of that. We are the only animal on this planet
that commits acts of cruelty simple for cruelty’s sake. Throughout history man
has attacked, subjugated, killed, or committed all sorts of atrocities against
another for no reason other than they don’t like them. If an animal…say a
dog…attacks another it is for a reason: pack hierarchy, food, territory,
mating, etc…man does it just because. I find myself more and more becoming
disgusted with the human race. It’s everywhere…you read it in history; you see
it on the news….hell you see it just driving down the road. It just seems that
mankind in general is on this long, looping downward spiral. We have more and
more stories about how we coming up with more and more ways of expanding on the
oldest profession we seem to have…cruelty. I have argued- this before with
people and have been told I read much too much into it. But if you look at it,
at its basest parts, cruelty is big business for man. How many shows do you see
that are “reality” shows that poke into people abusing someone or something, or
man at his worst. How many “game shows” are out there like Big Brother or
Survivor that encourage, no actually almost requires you, to backstab, betray,
lie, cheat, and do things you would not do in real life to succeed. And to what
end? A few dollars, some cheap thrills, your 15 minutes of fame?
“Oh David, this is just a phenomenon of the new millennia”….actually no its not. We have always been like this. Think about it.
Aztecs played a game that was literally life and death as the team who lost was sacrificed.
Romans had the Games…games where starved, unarmed slaves were put in a pit with starved and vicious predators just to see how long they would last. “Oh well those were barbaric times, we are past that now.” No we aren’t.
We have role models...and I use that term very loosely…getting busted for
pitting animals against each other in death matches for money…yes Michael V. I
am talking about you. Hell, go to any school, elementary, middle or high school, and watch one person attack another for some small slight and see how fast a ring of people form, cheering them on and adding fuel to that fire. Haven’t we come long way? Will they look back a few centuries from now and say “Yeah but those were barbaric times”, just like we do to our past? Where do we find that this ends?
I know that more and more we, as a collective, try and
expound how we are capable of great things to. And yes this is true. We are
also the only species that creates works like the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s
symphonies, “A Tale of Two Cities”, and other masterpieces. It just seems to me
that more and more the dark side of man’s psyche is evident. We do have a
duality, we have capability to love and to hate, or help and to harm. However
most people ease into the latter instead of the former simply because it is
easier to hate than to love.
All I can say is even though on one hand we are capable of great cruelty, we are also
capable of great love….I want to be a better person than I am now, but I don’t
regret the person I was. Good, bad, or otherwise I learn from each and every
one of these experiences…it a true fact of the cosmos we can’t have light
without dark…this is truly the duality of man. It has become a known fact that,
as sad as it may be, we can not truly know the how far we can forgive without
experiencing the true depths of cruelty.
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