I think into myself a lot these days. I sit and wonder about who I am in the great scheme of things and just how balanced I am. After thinking about it, I find that I hope that I don't balance. I hope that I am as far to the side of "right" as I could possibly be. I look out my window, down the streets, at St. Paul's retirement home and I see people in pain. I try to help those I can, but there is a burning desire that is left scalding my heart and mind. It hurts and pulls me into a place that makes me hate myself for not being able to bring someone that has died back, heal the sick or mend hearts. My soul seems to be convinced that I should be out saving the world and perhaps that still would not suffice.
I wish it were as easy as stripping down to a colorful costume and prowling the roads and alleyways, eliminating evil. I even doubt the one-sidedness of the dilemma. I see a man scolding his child harshly and I find myself wanting him to be evil. But, try as he might, no action he may commit could be of pure dark intent. Perhaps the child destroyed something of great value, and this kid is not a virgin to destruction (what child isn't?). Maybe father is an incredibly kind man, a pillar of his community, that has had his tolerance derailed slowly over five long years. It's possible his wife has recently passed and the pressure is too great. There are too many variants to the story and I cannot perceive every angle of the situation. Even if I could, how would I come to judgment? Who could I be, to decide how the situation should be dealt with?
The only situation that I have ever felt somewhat confident that I made the right choice in was the night of my attempted mugging. I felt as if the hand of God had aided me, turning my head to see the gun being drawn and shoving my across the ground twelve feet before he could level the weapon. There is no absolute evil and no absolute good. The Bible says that God created us in His image. It also states that we are a part of nature. We are both good and evil because God is both.
God is cruel, but his cruelty is refined.
Desperation Steven King
We are both because nature is both. I can only try to be the best person that I can be, and hope that it is enough. All my favorite songs are about heroes. I love comic books, particularly the classics such as Superman and Spider-man. The characters have always looked toward the perfect answers and always seem to come out on top. They always seem to know what is the correct decision to any situation. They can instantaneously assess a situation and every possible perceivable angle, knowing whether or not to hurt or help the subject. The more I think of these characters, the more I hate that I am not them. It was in that hatred one day, that I discovered a new voice; one so very familiar, yet I knew it had never raised its banter above the others. It whispered these words, in a cold yet strangely gentle manner.
“Perhaps, you are the villain of this story.”
At, first my mind rejected this concept as an affront on all senses. How could this be; a man that feels pain when is helpless to aid those in need, one that would lay down his life to save one person? And it spoke again, with the same steel comfort,
“Just how many have you saved? And just how many have you hurt?” It is said that one’s memory tends to favor the worse of recollections. This played the voice’s argument admirably.
No matter what you do, nobody thinks themselves a bad person.The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith