My own petty, unimportant and irrelevant moral dilemma should teach me something about the world and how to improve it. If I can not learn my lesson, then who can?
So here I am, a lucky old man sitting in his sunny garden in the late spring, contemplating his life and wondering how he gets it so badly wrong.
If I can get it so wrong and cause such ill feeling and anger then little wonder the world as a whole is a hotbed of war and bitterness. I do not have the excuse of poverty, childhood abuse, pain, illness. I am not suffering torture or violence. I am not being turfed out of my jungle dwelling in the Amazon rain forest by corrupt corporates and greedy, bribe taking politicians.
What I have been doing for the past three years is to battle for what I consider justice for a relative of mine who has been beset on all sides by others who appear to be less than rational, reasonable, nice or normal.
My endless fear it that I have it the wrong way round. That said victim and I are the aggressors, the unreasonable monsters, the people with horrible behavioural problems.
And perhaps we are. Or there again perhaps that is not the point.
As ever I have been trying to do what I thought was right and just and am left wondering instead whether I have the whole of life arse about face.
But endless questioning is right. Not to question is to leave oneself dangerously open to bigotry and a closed mind. In seeking to protect one relative I have been accused of seeking to “ruin” another.
I have no doubt that that “other” sees the matter in just that way. That “other” must assuredly see white as I see black, or vice versa. For me to claim that my intention is something else entirely is fruitless and yet to be meek and let my relative be trampled on does not seem to be just or equitable either.
Sadly the meek do not inherit the earth. When I see a bully I will take him on. I must just make sure that I do not become that bully myself.
Weltanschauung 