i was on the train home today, feeling sorry for the state of things in this world. yes, yes. i do my thinking everywhere. it may seem a little absurd to think so much on the train, of all places, where most of the thinking is typically done by little processors in expensive little gadgets, but i do indulge myself a little. and to be honest... ah, who cares what i think. the little glitzy things of this world have clearly won.
ah but yes, i was feeling sorry for humanity. we are such a petty race, such a terrible waste of good things. so selfish, so full of infighting, so lacking in sympathy, so self-absorbed, so unkind. what are we doing? how terrible it must be for a good person, to feel so adrift from this world, so ill-understood. maybe it was reading aung san suu kyi's nobel speech that got to me.
"the peace of our world is indivisible. as long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. it may be questioned whether all negative forces could ever be removed. the simple answer is: “no!” it is in human nature to contain both the positive and the negative. however, it is also within human capability to work to reinforce the positive and to minimize or neutralize the negative. absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. but it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveller in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation. even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.
i used the word ‘kinder’ after careful deliberation; i might say the careful deliberation of many years. of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that these are not numerous, i have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson i learnt on the value of kindness. every kindness i received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world."
"there could never be enough of it in our world". can you imagine that? that there can never be enough of something as simple and as utterly crucial as kindness. that no matter how much, no amount will ever be enough. that is so, utterly, sad. i do suppose aung san means it in a good way, but it gets to me the other way, all the same.
we have all the grand theories of life, nobility and the universality of man. and yet we are still so ignorant, so lacking in sympathy, so... utterly clueless. yes we have our great public uproars when some charged incident makes the news. we clamour over many things - overcrowding, delays, fraud. some are good and some not so, but who cares, these things come and go. and yet we have so little sympathy for each other, kin and stranger alike. somewhere in our minds we know that people are hungry, afflicted, disconsolate and dying. but who the fuck cares because we have ourselves to take care of... and we always do, we always do.
oh, if this is the mean of humanity, then... what's the point? we have to live and we have to die, do we also have to try? where have all the good men gone?
i remember once dl told me, that he was lying on some bed waiting for some serious procedure, and the verses that he remembered didn't help to encourage him. maybe i'm not getting this entirely right, after all, i might never know exactly how he felt, in those circumstances, and i probably got the words he said wrong. but it was something like that. and that eventually encouraged him to read the word a little bit closer.
i haven't done so in awhile. but as i was mulling over all these hopeless thoughts, a line revealed itself to me, just as the setting sun shone right into my eyes.
"the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it."
... but the darkness has not overcome it.
