White Rose

Today I am sad, and I will weep with the tears of a white rose.

For that people judge without understanding, point fingers without compassion, and would smear a name without considering that our name is sometimes all that we have. To never stand in another's shoes, to malign another person, is to never possess true empathy, despite the most watertight of pretenses and the most lofty claims of "moral standing". To stain another's reputation for the sake that our own be relatively (comparatively) boosted, that to me, is really such a shame, and a disappointment. When you strip someone of dignity, you rob from them a commodity much more precious than gold and silver, or almost anything in this world. You rob from them their very worth as a human being.

I felt my heart sink a slow, sluggish viscous descent - breaking in slow motion. But yet deep inside me, I understood the need and I understood the person, and so I quietly forgave. The need to seem better by making others seem worse.

I once wrote that perhaps we are but night lights in the sky, lighting the way for each other; and that perhaps we carve the paths not that we may walk it, but for someone else's better journey. But if the darkness is black so that the light may shine bright, should the light scold the darkness and scorn in contempt? For the light would be naught without the darkness that defines it.

I believe we are all gems, just some have been more polished and others have fallen to the wayside. Without having journeyed another's life, can we truly and earnestly say we understand? Perhaps we "should" be "thankful" for "bad" people because they make us look like saints. I have never bothered about the opinions of others, because I believed that as long as I am at peace with myself and accountable internally, it does not matter. But I do care when it comes from someone close to me. Whom I trust. Whom I love. It is the most heartbreaking of betrayals.

I am sad tonight, yet another petal of naivete falling from my flower of youth.


On Conscience

"A good conscience is a good pillow"

What Is good? What Is bad? With each sunrise I am lucky enough to see, I've witnessed my perspective on this shift and deepen in complexity. I've become more of what I will call a Relativist, someone who characterizes actions according to the situation. Like a camera with many different frameworks (night view, portrait, zoom, black/white etc), the same scene can be captured with many different points of view. Obviously the cameraman is going to have a different viewpoint than the subject. Unfortunately, a lot of times, we the cameraman consider ourselves akin to the subject.


To illustrate the ludicrousness of this, I will use the above photograph. The cameraman can see the insect and can see the finger and can see the green background, but can he feel the finger, or can he feel the warmth and can he feel the tension between bug and man? And even more importantly, is the cameraman the bug? Last time I checked, bugs still have not invented the technology to take pictures.