14 December 2013
1242 hrs
Well, Dear and Patient Readers,
Another
installment of the Cunning Fennec Fox’s world, ever turning, ever spinning,
ever hurtling through space at 32,000 miles per second.
Forgiveness,
and what about it? Christians and
Buddhists; Muslims and Hindus- they all, as well as many others, even the
secular, expound at length on the idea of it.
Of forgiveness. Forgiveness.
That no one
is as bad as The Worst He or She Has Ever Done . . . How could any of us be? There is always something good there in the
heart of another, is there not? Are none
of us looking far enough or deeply enough?
So many on
this world speak good speeches on the necessity of forgiveness, yet when they try
to put it to practice, they all seem to fall short, somehow.
I can only
speak of those in my circle, but my circle is large in its diameter, long in
its circumference, and broad in its girth.
I know many people, and many know me.
With my old
career in medicine and my fairly extensive travels, those whom I have met must
number into the hundreds of thousands.
Yet so few of them can look beyond the pasts of many more. Why is this?
I myself will give anyone two chances to treat me courteously and respectfully;
to judge (if I should even use that word) someone by the way they treat me from
that moment onward only. Why two
chances? Well, everyone has bad days. Maybe that first opportunity to make an
impression was simply that person’s every-once-in-a-while-bad-day.
I feel
another can be judged (that word again) by how kind he or she is to me when
they do not have to be. Isn’t that a
good way to weigh my fellow man? Does it
matter to me what they did in their (troubled?
Checkered, even) past? Should
it? If so, why? It doesn’t matter to me right now. Perhaps I am unwise in giving these folks,
everyone I meet, a chance to redeem themselves in a new relationship, however
brief or extended that relationship might be.
We are all
broken; some of us more than others. As
a whole, I tend to dislike Humanity; I feel people are the worst thing to ever
happen to the planet, with our pollution and our destruction of everything in
our way. Our wanton disregard for our
fellow humans. How we all want more for
me and less for you. In fact, you should
give me yours. I am better or stronger
or worth more than you are.
Look at how
we hunt, for example. Americans go
hunting on a full stomach. Does that
really make a whole lot of sense?
Oh, and I
love this argument: Well, hunting is just part of nature. Hunters cull the herd. Really.
Hmmm, let us dissect that a bit:
Nature
culls the herd with the predator(s) separating the old, the weak, and the
infirm from the herd. They isolate the
“parasitic” creature and remove it and therefore its infirmity or whatever from
the genetics of the group. The lame slow
down the herd; the weaker newborns use too many resources from their mothers,
who may even get killed themselves trying to protect the young that won’t thrive,
anyway. Then she and her excellent
motherly instincts are removed from the herd, and the gene pool is diluted by
that fraction more.
How many
hunters out there say, “Screw it. I
ain’t gonna kill that prize buck . . .
I’m gonna wait until I see an old one limp along, and then I’ll shoot it
through its bony ribcage . . .?”
I have
never heard it. We (humans . . .
hunters) look for the most excellent trophy specimen we can find and remove its
DNA from the population. The bigger the
faster the better. Nature does not do
that. OK, it’s not for me to say who can
go out there and kill critters. I myself
do not. I am an excellent marksman; even
better with a telescopic sight, and I used to hunt successfully every season,
no matter the game. So go out there and
kill shit left and right. Just don’t
pretend you mimic the natural order of things and say you “cull the herd.” You’re weak AND a liar if you do.
SO how did
I digress so far from my original point?
Jesus, I am as my writing professor admonished: Disorganized.
I was only
illustrating how we humans, in trying to defend our behavior, make excuses for
it based on faulty data and weak anecdotes.
We are the worst thing that
has ever happened to the planet.
But let’s
filter down to individuals. There are,
you bet, people that get their two chances with me and then never get any
deeper into my circle. Sometimes I avoid
them completely, excluding them from my life altogether. That is not to say that they have no
redeeming qualities whatsoever; quite the opposite I am sure. I just don’t have time to wait for them to
make me feel good, or feel like I am a better person for knowing them.
I surround
myself with people that make me feel good.
Why hang out with people that make me feel bad, waiting until they
don’t? Bullshit. Life is too short.
I know a
guy, a good friend of mine, who did nearly 30 years in state prison for
murder. He and his younger brother shot
a man while robbing a gas station. The
armed robbery aggravated the sentence, and these two boys, 19 and 17 years old
at the time were given the maximum sentence at the time.
But they
are not murderers, nor are they aggravated robbers. They are human beings, kind ones even, who
both have committed a crime. A serious
crime, to be sure; perhaps the saddest
crime there is. There is no coming back
for the victim of murder. Almost
everyone I know would never have the first thing to do with this friend of
mine.
And the Christians who always
use the whole, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at
her . . .” (Of course, they always misquote it, being so well-versed in their
own fucking Bible) argument? Sounds good
until you apply it to real life.
Other religions out there are
not exempt, either. I can’t count how many
“Buddhists” (or “students” of Buddha’s teachings) I have met who say people
should have compassion for others in order to decrease all suffering, and then
turn around and say they can have no more contact with somebody because
something emerged about their past.
Sometimes these Holies even aid in the propagation of rumors or exacerbate
the shunning process. Fucking hypocrisy.
I’m no Dalai Lama, but I am
pretty sure that the Main Tenet of Buddhism is not, “Every Man for Himself . . . oh and uh, stay away from that guy . . .”
I would
never begrudge a person of his past if he or she treats me well in the
present. Why is it I? Why is it that the best Christian or whatever
forgiving-type at the table is the Atheist?
If you do not measure the value
of a person by whom he or she is now, but only look at, not the way they were even, but only by the things
they have done in their past . . .
well then, I am better than
you.
Does that make me
conceited? Maybe. But that conceit means that there are many
people out there who can come to me and feel comfortable, knowing they will not
be punished on this earth forever. That
they have a safe haven here within my own heart. So all of you hypocrites that spout love and
brotherhood and turning the other cheek can go fuck yourselves. Most of you are not the ones whose cheeks
were slapped in the first place!
Are these people, in your eyes,
really beyond all redemption? Can’t
people be sorry for the things they have done?
Maybe they can’t fix whatever it is they broke in another human
being. Maybe a family is forever changed
by that person’s bad act. But what if
they never break the law again? Not only
that, but what if they do good things from here on out? What if they try to make amends as well as
they know how, or at the best of their ability with whatever tools they have at
their disposal? What if they help others
get over the hurdles that rise up in all of our lives? What if they help another student or coworker
deal with a problem and better that person’s life, or ease their suffering, or make
a dream come true?
Or will you assholes out there
forever say, “Hey, there’s that rapist who pulled all of those kids from that
burning bus . . . stay away from him.”
Does that mean this person should never find happiness, or have a family
of his or her own, or that they should be alone until they die, and even then
not have a hand held by a nurse as he or she breathes his or her last?
What about those of you who
have broken a promise? Any of you saints
around? You have a much greater chance
of re-offending than my friends mentioned back there, the two repentant
brothers. You never went to jail for
that broken promise, however deeply it hurt the other; you cheaters and many
who are unfaithful to your spouses. Those
who forget about their ends of bargains . . .
Should you all be forever shunned?
Hypocrites.
Forgiveness my ass. I see more haters in this world than I ever
see lovers. Heaven must truly be as
scantly populated as the Sahara itself if y’all are the yardstick by which St.
Peter measures the good in man. I don’t
even believe in a Heaven, but I’m sure glad it’s not full of freaks like you of
whom I speak. (Dear and Patient Reader
you, of course, are excluded from this herd against whom I rant).
You deserve no reward Up There
if this is how you are Down Here. I
don’t see many of y’all trying to be better people than you are right now . .
. But you know what? I forgive you.
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