Tragedy

When you are working to do good in the world there comes a point when the reality of the job's difficulty overwhelms optimism. Whether a person is prepared for it or not, a question ends up hanging in the balance. Are you going to carry on in the face of this more realistic appreciation of how hard and unpleasant it is to do good in the world, or will you throw in the towel and look for something easier to do?

It's funny to me that we idealize the "saving the world from suffering" concept. Don't we realize that to relieve suffering we actually have to join it? We can't stand on a mountain far away and call to the suffering to come towards us. We have to go down into the pool of injustice and carry people out.

Okay, so maybe some do realize that they will experience personal suffering when trying to rid the world of suffering. But there's another level. Some of that suffering, some of the most painful suffering they will ever experience, will come from the people close to them, the people they work with, eat with, fight the battle with.

This form of suffering is probably the most damaging. It comes for us when we're unprepared, when we're taking a day off and relaxing. It cuts us deeply because these people know us, they called us friends, they know our weaknesses.

I wonder if, inherently, it is nearly impossible for us as humans to work together well. Maybe it's in our DNA, put there after the Tower of Babel. A genetic predisposition to grate on each other. At its worst, this pride, selfishness, insecurity--call it what you'd like--causes global wars, destruction, death, greedy consumerism and cut-throat to-the-death compition. At it's best you have a team, corporation, ministry, traipsing a long just fine because their leader is an excellent fireman, putting out flames when the heat of teamwork gets too intense... which happens daily.

Humanity has to put some serious effort into getting along. Why isn't it the other way around? Why do we have to teach kids not to lie, instead of teaching them TO lie? In our natural state, I think humanity would so repel each other that we would divide up into little clans and spread far and wide across the globe. Wait. We already did that.

I'm annoyed at this whole thing. Annoyed because I know there was something better intended for our existence, something whole and beautiful. It's torture knowing that we were meant for perfection because that makes the imperfection and the fact that I can't ever fix them, all the more tragic.