Tough Call
Anything worth gambling on happens far from Vegas.
We - as in all of us - may never know where we stand, exactly, between a deed's goodness or its foolhardiness; how close we are to the rosy glow of helping or the frost of incalculable harm. Not because we're stupid, but because, among those of us who tend to engage, not doing something can feel like those deaths of a thousand cuts they talk about.
They don't exactly come up on road signs. Mainly because they won't freaking fit:
"Caution: Critical Situation Ahead - one in which you may be impelled to interact even though you've unwittingly been steeping in ignorance about the very thing requiring great discernment. Buckle up!"
So what's it gonna be, kids? And there we will be, unaccompanied by certainly - indeed, abandoned by it entirely - weighing whether or not to take action that, in the end, may not affect us at all, but which can change everything about the second party. Forever. When it's all said and done. If we live any kind of a life at all, this'll happen more than once, but never, ever, in exactly the same way.
That's why most people keep on driving.
We like to think we would've done the right thing with that little bison. That we would have kept. On. Driving. After all, just because we look away when the lion gets the gazelle in the nature shows doesn't mean we begrudge her that meal. But. We also know what it's like to recall when the ache of inaction surpassed regret itself - for that thing we 'shouldn't have done'.
It's why, as time hauls ass much faster than we ever thought it could go, we're pausing more - hell, at ALL - before grumbling about the idiots who interfere with mother nature. Maybe answering to our second nature - to matter.
At least in that possibly foolish moment, in that one act which they've undoubtedly second guessed a million times since, checkmating the brain with the heart, they honest to God just tried to help.
We - as in all of us - may never know where we stand, exactly, between a deed's goodness or its foolhardiness; how close we are to the rosy glow of helping or the frost of incalculable harm. Not because we're stupid, but because, among those of us who tend to engage, not doing something can feel like those deaths of a thousand cuts they talk about.
They don't exactly come up on road signs. Mainly because they won't freaking fit:
"Caution: Critical Situation Ahead - one in which you may be impelled to interact even though you've unwittingly been steeping in ignorance about the very thing requiring great discernment. Buckle up!"
So what's it gonna be, kids? And there we will be, unaccompanied by certainly - indeed, abandoned by it entirely - weighing whether or not to take action that, in the end, may not affect us at all, but which can change everything about the second party. Forever. When it's all said and done. If we live any kind of a life at all, this'll happen more than once, but never, ever, in exactly the same way.
That's why most people keep on driving.
We like to think we would've done the right thing with that little bison. That we would have kept. On. Driving. After all, just because we look away when the lion gets the gazelle in the nature shows doesn't mean we begrudge her that meal. But. We also know what it's like to recall when the ache of inaction surpassed regret itself - for that thing we 'shouldn't have done'.
It's why, as time hauls ass much faster than we ever thought it could go, we're pausing more - hell, at ALL - before grumbling about the idiots who interfere with mother nature. Maybe answering to our second nature - to matter.
At least in that possibly foolish moment, in that one act which they've undoubtedly second guessed a million times since, checkmating the brain with the heart, they honest to God just tried to help.
posted by Dustin at
12:11 PM 
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