My mother cries if someone else in the room is crying, even if she doesn't know why. My father cries at hallmark commercials (sorry dad, i outed you). The older I get the more I, too, cry at the drop of a hat. Recently, I've found myself choked up at the oddest moments: like watching fireworks at Epcot -- I love Disney, but not that much. Why cry? I even found myself tearing up while watching Cirque De Soliel with Thomas -- What the hell could be sentimental about that?
It struck me on both of those occasions that humans are capable of beauty that borders on genius: music, film, painting, grace, sculpture, poetry, and acts of love. From the great works of Michaelangelo, Keats, and Picasso to the simplest moments of kindness.
But it wasn't just the grandeur of moment that caused that inevitable bit of water around the eyes, it was the fact that everyday we are surrounded by it's converse. By greed, war, poverty, and hate. We see genocide, fear-mongering based on religion, race, and creed, and ugly weapons being built for even uglier wars. In our lives we are capable of jealousy, envy, and anger. But it becomes worse, much worse. George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright that won the Nobel Prize, once said "The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity." We walk past the destitute, we avert our eyes to the woman crying alone a table, and we claim that their suffering is not our business.
Humans are so good and so terrible. "Do I contradict myself, very well, then i contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes" (Whitman, Song of Myself).
We, I, am able to create and destroy beauty. I will do well to remember this because humanity is so easily attracted to destruction. To destroy is human, to create one literally becomes god-like. Transcending to such a level takes much more work.
Gypsy On.
20 days....
1 comment:
Oh and you need to go ahead and buy La Nouba it's an awesome soundtrack we love it. I wasn't too impressed with the fireworks at epcot. I mean setting the lake on fire AWESOME! But Fantasmic in Studio Hollywood was INfinately better I thought.
I don't know that man is attracted to destruction so much as it is predisposed to it. We get the idea that we can do things better than what the design of this world allows and while it works for a time in the end we cause more destruction with what we have created.
While it's lame I am going to refer to a movie "the Rock" In it when talking about the VX poison Stanley Goodspeed calls it "One of those things we'd like to disinvent" Alot of things man stumbles on under the auspices of improvement wreck all kinds of havoc on this world. Look at nuclear power. IT is the cleanest the most efficient way of generating power and yet we used the technology to invent a bomb of devistating proportions. Does that mean Nuclear technology is an evil invention or a mistake of man? No I think it was a revelation of God but MAN used it irresponsibly.
Look at all the institutions that claim to be fighting for conservation and yet they aren't responsible (or reasonable) in their application of preservation of resources. When a Hydro electric dam can be blown up because the number of a certain fish are declining close to the dam regardless of how much they are over producing up stream and that is called a victory for conservation it makes me sad. The enemy is not conservatives or liberals. It's not big oil or the corporations. It's not the government or lack of. The enemy is ignorance. And instead of fighting it we use it as a weapon. Until we lose the lazy streak and actually do real research (which means studying opinions you don't agree with as well) ignorance will forever dominate us.
God save us from our sloth and our willful ignorance
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