Do unto Others...
...because they do unto You!
I love that phrase because I love laughing about absurd things. I mean, if you don’t laugh…
Because they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, right?
What if you decided to love someone who was about to fill you with semi-automatic projectiles –
Yeah sure, you’re dead either way… but what’s the better way to go?
at least in theory?
And then what of all your mourners –
will they be angry and vengeful and step up the rampage?
or maybe shocked and confused admiring, maybe even follow you and stand down death with love?
What a display to the world that’d be. Who’d even know how to respond??
“Do I just let them keep dropping like loving little flies?
Like lambs to the slaughter?”
Some may say naive...
yeah, on second thought, nothing like that ever gained any traction... 🙄
…
Compromise and trade off. Life’s full of it.
Right and wrong choices blur like red and blue on your car air conditioner, and most days you find yourself dialing in a balance.
The clever kids leave the bloody thing off to save themselves the hassle, because thinking is hard.
(and I know, the actual smart kids leave it off and crack the windows open..)
Did I say thinking? Like choosing a position?
Why choose?
Because you need to be on the right side? I must! Of a dial with infinite positions?
Fence sitters are equally scorned as lukewarm. Like over-polite Brits not wanting to offend,
“I say chap, that hole in the ground you live in looks rather…ehm, cosy, what with all that gravel and hot shrapnel and such.”
But I digress – we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
This isn’t an appeal to relativism either, like my position is right, and yours is right too
– and that’s ok,
happy rainbows and unicorns to us all in the fairy-bread kingdom forever!!
No, sadly it’s more likely we’re both making compromising choices based on incomplete information daily. We only partly see and partly know the consequences of any given action, even the best of them.
I read somewhere once (or twice) that
“Not by might nor by power…”
and
“If he wants your scarf, give him your jacket as well.”
Let the right be right, let the wrong be wrong. Sometimes bad things prevail, and sometimes good things do. Whoever over-celebrates a warm sunny day will rue the cold soon enough.
So back to the AC – hot, cold, in between? Turn it off? Get out of your car and walk?
Whatever mate, just do what you’re personally and directly responsible for as best you bloody can.
But what’s best?
What will serve your immediate needs and not compromise another’s, I guess.
But there’s always compromise.
The question is, who do you compromise first or more?
You or others?
So think hard, think often, think carefully, think honestly and think humbly, and always make love the only non-negotiable.
Dial in your position carefully.
Love acts, love does, love transcends self for others. And only it conquers all.
Including death. With ease