In The End
In the end, I must trust in myself. I have seen men who have beaten from themselves the ability to recognize truth and goodness, and I do not think I am one of them. I can still see the tears in a young child’s eyes and feel pain at his suffering.
If I ever lose this, then I will know that I’ve passed beyond hope of redemption.
— excerpt, Mistborn p. 395, by Brandon Sanderson
A concluding thought on Stoicism. After everything has been said, when there is nothing left to say — the humanity of each one of us is in our own hands. If circumstances, including others who oppose us are allowed to strip away our self respect, and induce a state of groveling, then we have relinquished what is most precious and without price. We can strike this deal out of shear terror or we may be bought for “thirty pieces of silver.” The outcome is the same. We have become a hollow man, or woman.
What this soulless condition costs us is our empathy, the ability to feel the pain of others. A few examples come to mind:
The quest for food, for shelter, for work of a Guatemalan immigrant. The terror of a child whose parents are swept up in an ICE raid on a packing house. An elderly woman who can no longer afford her medication. An African American kid living in Englewood, on the south side of Chicago, where there is no summer work, except drug running on the streets.
Every man and woman is his and her own judge, in the end.
One thought on “In The End”
Bootstraps. The answer any ignorant, unsympathetic, unrealistic, right wing prognosticator of social mores will give. “Just pull ’em up and you’ll succeed”. The mantra of those who grew up with White Privilege, blinders firmly in place, pretending it only takes verve to extricate oneself from the prison of poverty and prejudice. Stick these Trump apologists in a one room dirt floored shack in rural Alabama for 10 years and let’s see their bootstraps get pulled up. As Harper Lee noted (through the character of Atticus Finch), “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view….Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”