The Corrosiveness of Hate or, The Day After

Doug and I watched the 9/11 go Minutes segment last night. Powerfully intense and heartshattering. So many sons literally donned their father’s boots, afterwards, in the NYC Fire Dept. Not one person said no, am not going in there. Not one person and many had to know they weren’t coming out alive. The best and the worst, that day, and it’s always shades of grey, but it was stark, that demarcation (who would ever think about those terrorists having families who loved them, or having gifts and talents, or pruning gardens or… Who would ever think them anything but less than human and yet, we are all human but. I can go no farther… Just as heaven is only a word-concept, really, so is depravity. I can’t put myself in it to understand it. I can’t stand under it. I can’t even stand over it. I can’t stand to think of it and yet we must. We must consider the hatred, at least acknowledge it, as the other side of the coin of love. And we must ask ourselves how to meet at least in the middle, to end the duality, to drop the need to decimate, to be fully human, together, on this disintegrating planet. We must have these difficult conversations.

LBM 9/12/2022