“Master…I am confused. We are taught honor and caring. We are taught to step aside so an innocent stranger can pass uninjured. We learn to aid the poor and the lame. We honor sacrifice over personal glory.”
“This is true, Grasshopper. All very true. And do you feel that you have failed in some way to live up to this goal?”
“I fail every day, Master. But I never stop striving to always do my very best for those I encounter in my travels. Often however, I cross paths with people who find pleasure in the injury of others, even in the injury of their own family. This confuses me, for are not these people also taught the value of honor and caring about others?”
“Grasshopper, I was chosen to teach, to impart such values to young people like you, and through many decades I have tried my very best. But like all teachers I too sometimes fail. Some people choose not to learn, and they leave in their wakes evidence of the harm they have brought to others. Many teachers fail, even when they strive their hardest. Perhaps this is the teacher’s fault. Perhaps it is the fault of the student. Perhaps some people simply are not ready for such lessons.”
My routine takes me from our home in one town to my clinic in another each Sunday morning. Officially, I go there to feed the three-legged cat. She appreciates this. In fact, she insists upon it.
During those years when I submitted my column to the newspaper, I got into the habit of sending out my e-mail version of the column while I was at the clinic on Sunday mornings. If you have ever wondered how I came up with the name of my Sunday Column, it’s really no more complicated than that.
Most Sundays I drive past a couple of churches along the way. Some might wonder why I drive past, rather than stop in to visit. But as I often try to explain to those folks who insist upon convincing me that there is value in the time spent inside those certain buildings, as opposed to all those other buildings, I deliver the same answer. It’s the answer I gave to those two nicely dressed, very polite young men who came to my door with the smiles on their faces and the pamphlets in hand. I don’t go into those buildings because they are full of people. And too often I find people lacking.
Yesterday was Easter, so as I drove by the usual churches on Easter Sunday, the parking lots were quite full. This phenomenon occurs again around Christmas. Twice a year the regular attendees see faces they haven’t seen in months as those a bit less committed show up hoping something will rub off on them as they pass by. They pack the parking lots to capacity, and then when things are over inside the building, a few race to their cars and try to run each other down in their rush to get out of the parking lot.
This phenomenon was common way back in the day when I did attend a church, and some made comment about it. And nothing has changed over the years. Now, probably most of the people who do such touch and go visits are decent people. And there is absolutely no guarantee that the regular attenders are even passable humans. Such is the unpredictability of the folks with whom we share this planet. And if one of the chores of the folks driving churches is to impact the decency of the people they strive to teach, they fail as often as everybody else.
I made a promise once to be “trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” Occasionally I live up to this pledge. Most times at least, I try. I know many who similarly do a pretty good job at this, and a handful of others who seem to have missed the message, and for them there is an un or dis on the front of many of those words.
I’ve seen the promise of “Semper Fidelis” (always faithful) lived on a daily basis. And I’ve seen that other version, the semper assholis, as the latins used to say, running roughshod over anyone in their way.
The news each day is largely filled with the misadventures of the people who never got the memo. They don’t go out of their way to be nice to each other. Instead, they lie cheat steal at the expense of the rest of us. They thrive on causing harm. They are the murderers, thieves, child molesters, politicians, and various other low lives that clog the news and plague the planet. And there are others who live very close to us, and find ways to constantly cause harm.
Some are strangers until they harm us. Others live in our own families, and we know them all too well. Perhaps it is worse when the people who set out to harm us are members of our own families. Certainly this pains us more.
I don’t know any answer to the challenge presented by nasty people. I certainly prefer the nice ones. I would suggest that we all place mirrors where we can see them, so we will tend more to the nice side of things. And I caution all to watch out for the nasty ones.
At least on TV the character Grasshopper was given the opportunity to kick some of the nasty folks in the chin. That was fiction. In real life we mostly are left to suffer at their hands. The truly bad ones have no conscience, and they will never change. And when they are in your family, that does disappoint.
No comments:
Post a Comment