PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Sometimes horror befalls our lives. It happens to me, it happens to you, it happens to us all. When it happens to those we love and care about, it can feel like a sword in our heart, maybe even felt to the extreme that we think they are injured even more than us, when in actuality, we have allowed their experience to touch us in a way that produces a far more injurious violation to ourselves than it ever did to them, and yet we are blind to this phenomena due to the overwhelming emotion it produces within us. It is as if the waves of compassion can sometimes submerge our very being into the waters of every possible emotion with an upsurge of ripping signals to try and tame the source of our turbulence. We perceive that source as something that we must conquer under the guise of 'what is just', which is something one can only create for oneself.  When we are blind to what justice really is, we add a lot of ingredients that change the recipe of empathy completely. Before we know it, our anger is in charge of steering the boat, and we can no longer even feel the pull of the tides calling us to listen to the sound of our heart long enough to understand that the whirlwind of emotions within us that caused the actual signals to tame the beast we seek, is really the beast of our own fury. Plato once said, "Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race." (Republic 473c-d)". He also said, "“Justice will be achieved only when those who are not injured feel as indignant as those who are.” --Plato, Circa 400 BC-

I read those statements to mean that balance is needed in society. But as Gandhi leaves us pearls of wisdom that beseech us to find the peace within, and the Buddha's call summons us to light our own candle within, we are incessantly drawn toward the outer world in attempts to get the answers we can only find within us. We honor the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and John Kennedy for their strong stands they took when it came to social injustice, and still, we so many times reject our own needs to calm the waters of discontent within our own soul's yearning for harmony among men. We listen more to the ripping signals of despair, anger, and greed, more than we listen to the whimpering sounds of our own longing to be whole, safe, forgiving, and at one with the Earth and each other.  Where will the balance that Plato describes begin? The scales of justice must begin somewhere, and I strongly believe that somewhere is only found within ourselves. When a loved one is taken from this world and torn from our earthly gaze, they leave behind a whisper that can only be heard when we meet them at that place where we meet on the inside.

When we can maintain the inside of ourselves and be at peace, we can then move on and go out into the world and conquer it with love. We may never get to see 'an eye for an eye' the way we once perceived it to be, but that has always been something different anyway. I am most certain that is called revenge.

© 2013

...........