TUESDAY THOUGHTS

                Why do so many seek to be part of a movement?  Is it for “the cause” or simply a seeking to belong?  Are the social movements at present principles anyone really rejects?  If an unjustifiable wrong is witnessed, accounted for, and addressed: what do we benefit taking it further into unjust retribution?  Does this not perpetuate further enmity and division in our present times?  To be reticent towards excessive response does not excuse or relativize the beginning wrong, but to permit the latter, do we undermine the Right in our beginning grievance?

                Does our falling into a collective empower our individuality or simply remove our ownership of personal identity?  Is there identity of an individual within a mass collective?  Does a man have a voice when his voice must necessarily echo that of the collective if it is to be welcomed and belong?  If so, is such an “identity?”

                I have no answers, only wonderings.  I believe we all have the ability to make the world better.  Perhaps this comes at times in collectives; other times we must stand alone.  I think it is less important to join into echo of a message already being screamed—such sounds are already heard—but to remain attuned to the softer voice, conscience, and spirit within us that guides us to live, and not simply speak, well. 

                Virtue can become vice when taken into an extreme becoming excess.  Is this not Aristotle’s principles of Virtue: the proper and harmonious balance between two opposing vices?  Virtue, in many instances, is not black or white, nor is it a shade of gray.  Virtue is often color in life observed when living in proper accord with condition. 

                Looking at our world today, I perceive we have missed the mean: the virtue that comes in loving all—not by blind equality, but formed and retained fraternity.  We are all different, but we all deserve and should seek to live well together—not blind to our differences, but in recognition of all the variables that make us unique and imbue us with individual worth.  When we seek to cast the world as black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, (and while there are extreme circumstances when such may be) do we not more often denigrate life to the dullness we choose to see rather than raise our vision to something of greater wonder?  In our aim to see the world as degrees of monochromatic shade, are we not made colorblind to the infinite hues that give beauty to our existence?

                I’ve never seen the world as an “us” versus “them.”  I’ve never found gain in denigrating another unique soul to the generality of caricature and stereotype simply to fit a beginning bias: it isn’t true.  I believe we are all unique, all of value, all deserving of dignity and respect every day of our lives. 

                Nobody lives a life of perfect virtue.  We all fail, commit different degrees of wrong, sin, disrespect, permit anger to get the best of us.  This is human, and regardless of the labels of righteousness or condemnation we place upon ourselves, we will never be anything more than this: human.  In some moments, we will fail.  In others, we will rise above who it is we thought that we could be.  We will do right.  We will learn from wrong.  We will continue seeking to be better: for ourselves and to all around us.  This is growth that comes in living, a becoming nearer to the Virtue of a “Good Life” whose balance between opposing vices is only found through the continuous life testing of experience

                I don’t have any collective answers to our present social angsts.  I don’t know if a collective answer exits.  Maybe it’s on each of us to live the right, and by individual action and ownership, the collective demand is made mute.  I don’t have an answer, but I have a thought, a quote from a book recently read:

“Love each other well and always.  There is nothing else but that in the world: love for each other.”           

Maybe it’s not an answer, but isn’t it worth a try?

(“Love each other well and always. There is nothing else but that in the world: love for each other,” is cited from Jean Valjean, in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.”)

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