There is horror and there is love. Within our own selves and all around us.
My heart cannot discriminate in how it loves and mourns those in Paris, Beirut, Syria, North Korea or anywhere else that humans decide, for whatever reason, to let the rage and fear, rather than the compassion, within them to guide their actions.
And I know that there are so many moments when I do the same within myself. So many times when I react to myself or another with cruelty and must remember to come back to love.
I cannot bring myself to blame or hate the people who have committed atrocities because I know the part of myself which has the capacity to do the same: the cold calculating, lusting for power, vengeful, hate-filled part of me that would ruthlessly and almost joyfully kill if it believed that was the 'right' thing to do.
Though I may choose not to act from that place in such a way as terrorists, I think perhaps this is down to the grace that I have been given in life of loving family, friends, decent schooling, the privilege of self-exploration and awareness and the luxury of living in a relatively safe country. And yes, any of us can be borne into any situation and have very different outcomes but if I choose compassion as a daily practice, and I do, then I must surely find compassion for that cruel part of me and that cruel part of them.
How lost, how far from your own heart do you have to be to brutally murder other people? How deeply sad that our species creates the conditions for that to happen.
And if you still believe you are any different, I invite you to truly take note of every single thought you have in just one day and notice how many of them contain violence of some kind, towards yourself or another. If we are continually brutalised then we learn brutality. The rest is simply a matter of scale.
Someone somewhere therefore has to choose to break the cycle. To choose, rather than continuing on with the hatred, the revenge, the need to justify, defend and be right, to instead lay down their weapons (whether words, attitudes, guns or bombs) and say enough: I choose love. The more of us make that choice in our own hearts, the more we will live in the kind of world most of us say we truly want. It is in our own hands.
My heart cannot discriminate in how it loves and mourns those in Paris, Beirut, Syria, North Korea or anywhere else that humans decide, for whatever reason, to let the rage and fear, rather than the compassion, within them to guide their actions.
And I know that there are so many moments when I do the same within myself. So many times when I react to myself or another with cruelty and must remember to come back to love.
I cannot bring myself to blame or hate the people who have committed atrocities because I know the part of myself which has the capacity to do the same: the cold calculating, lusting for power, vengeful, hate-filled part of me that would ruthlessly and almost joyfully kill if it believed that was the 'right' thing to do.
Though I may choose not to act from that place in such a way as terrorists, I think perhaps this is down to the grace that I have been given in life of loving family, friends, decent schooling, the privilege of self-exploration and awareness and the luxury of living in a relatively safe country. And yes, any of us can be borne into any situation and have very different outcomes but if I choose compassion as a daily practice, and I do, then I must surely find compassion for that cruel part of me and that cruel part of them.
How lost, how far from your own heart do you have to be to brutally murder other people? How deeply sad that our species creates the conditions for that to happen.
And if you still believe you are any different, I invite you to truly take note of every single thought you have in just one day and notice how many of them contain violence of some kind, towards yourself or another. If we are continually brutalised then we learn brutality. The rest is simply a matter of scale.
Someone somewhere therefore has to choose to break the cycle. To choose, rather than continuing on with the hatred, the revenge, the need to justify, defend and be right, to instead lay down their weapons (whether words, attitudes, guns or bombs) and say enough: I choose love. The more of us make that choice in our own hearts, the more we will live in the kind of world most of us say we truly want. It is in our own hands.