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Sunday Nov. 15, 2015

 

Nobody wins. Nobody learns. Nobody changes. Exploration by man needs to be more of man, to understand better and finally what makes man’s inhumanity, cruelty and tactics …

Sit still. Sit quiet. Sit in a still room, a quiet room – look out a window, witness stillness. I don’t mean to under-rate the significance of recent terrorist attacks, or their impact on Parisians – on all of us as we recognize the acts of so few, just faces in the crowd, can do so much harm.

So many chances to know goodness, see goodness and believe in goodness – it seems so ridiculous that we must wage war against warriors and I wonder how it can be stopped. Not a new problem. A very old one. Seems we can put people on the moon and contemplate sending people to Mars. We explore the expanse of the universe and the complexity of things tiny, smaller than electrons and neutrons. There is no single mystery to life that is not of connections, of compounding so many mysteries. Science probes them.

My thinking today is not so much focused on those perpetrators or those victims, but rather about other unrecognizable faces in so many crowds – no recognition, no evil, no notice.

Understanding of violence and pain infliction seems so under-explored. I wonder if future generations will get it sorted because up until now nobody has.

There is so much good in the world. People doing good. Not Nobel-prize good, not front-page good, just good. Good work, good deeds, good enough to make a difference. We don’t see them on the news. How and where do we celebrate them?


Mark Kolke

written / published from Calgary, AB

morning walk:   -1C/31F, mostly clear, early sun has burned off the fog – negligible breeze, a rabbit encounter (a big fat guy .. his coat 90% white – perhaps he is predicting weather …), Gusta happy to get out after a restless night …

Reader feedback:

FAR FROM AFAR

Yeah, you are back...missed your blogs. This one is so (do you mind the word?) sweet...that is the beginning meander of meaning to others...so true...then the Paris commentary. so thought provoking and so wise...yummm...you are back! Yeah for us!, SF, Lethbridge, AB


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