Courage and progress

The more the kids and I have discussed it, the more convinced I am.

The greatest bulk of human tragedy is borne of cowardice.

And the most pernicious cowardice of all is the failure to say those three little words that we find it so hard to say.

I was wrong.

Actually, as my friend Julie said recently, that's probably not true. The truth is that our cowardice is borne of our ability to say, "I love me. And I love you. Enough for both of us to be wrong plenty in life. Because that's what's gonna happen anyway, fool. Now stop hogging the blanket."

And most of that is borne of the further cowardice to acknowledge that perhaps our failure to do that is borne of our failure to treat each other more decently and forgive one another when we do screw up. And the ways that aggression is not only limited in preventing otherwise, but has generally contributed to creating many of those messes, in the first place.

When I think of all of the people who have died, lived in fear, and otherwise had lives destroyed or seriously undermined by this one common source, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the stupidity and waste of it all.

With the solid knowledge that our only hope of turning it around is finding the courage to face this failure.

And it is courage, it is clear to me, at this point, that is borne of love, and compassion, and decency, and forgiveness. And all of the values that we fear make us weak. But which really are our surest source of strength.

That is a fact, I am clear, at this point. And a stubborn fact more stubborn than our stubborn refusal to acknowledge it.

And it is our stubborness to acknowledge that fact that is the single most destructive source of the greatest share of preventable human tragedy in our sad, destructive history.

And it is a fact that does not care what we think otherwise. It is a fact that will most certainly be a part of human existence, in some smaller way, likely, for as long as we exist. And it is a fact that will engender the most serious preventable tragedy until we face it.

I've had to make my peace with this fact.

Until we find the courage to face it. And to be better, for real.

The only honest progress humanity has ever known.