Pulling Sanity From Evil

Pulling Sanity From Evil

That’s a nice punchy title no? It can be easy to view yourself as surrounded or set upon by the worst the world has to offer but oft times things are not so malevolent as we may feel.

Those who have read my blog long, all six of you, know that I work with children during the day job and it gives me, I feel, quite the window into humanity. They are little people with all the flaws and virtues that we see in everyone else just without the decades of cultural normalization, yet.

Being the incomplete humans they are, they are often hurtful to one another. They test boundaries, try out new things and will jump into an idea with the exuberance that only a child can posses. When they act in such a way I can react with animosity or I can react with patience and instruction. As someone wiser than I put it.

“Never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to ignorance.”

Carry that with you and the world is a far more sane and understandable place. Of course the counter balance to that statement must be recognized as well.

“Sufficient ignorance acts as malice.”

I’m not telling you to let go of all things and treat any infraction or wrong doing as the mistakes of a child. In truth we take great pains to correct the mistakes of children so they do not set into harmful habits, do we not?

My real concern is not just that you may be heaping harm upon yourself by assuming malice in others but also that you may be heaping harm upon yourself by not solving your own ignorance.

The OTHER thing seeing the ignorance in children does is it reminds me that a person never knows how ignorant they are and what an immense benefit continuous learning is to you. How your ignorance may harm yourself. Both in the abstract such as voting against your own interests but in the very tangible such as eating foods harmful to your body.

Ignorance is a companion that follows us all our life and we can ignore it until it becomes a mountain that damages us and everything around us or we can stuff it with knowledge so it becomes a library deep with lore and dark corners waiting to be filled.

I hope I am filling my library swiftly, and I suggest you do so as well and if nothing else remember sometimes it’s not a desire to cause but a lack of awareness of the harm done. And that is a much easier hill to surmount than malice..

Thank you my dear readers for allowing me to bend your ear, or I suppose eyes, for this missive.

Thank you my dear readers and God bless.

~S. Wallace