Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Most evil comes from the belief that one is a victim, or one’s group is a victim. Dennis Prager

I watched a YouTube video with a U.S. Marine convicted of something he didn’t do and he said he came out of prison a better man. He learned how to get along in prison, the other prisoners, Warden, and guards believed he was innocent, and he helped other prisoners with their legal problems – with the Warden’s blessing.

Even if we are convicted, there is dignity in innocence, which is evident in real-life stories and movies. When we accept hard things in life and become better, not bitter we might see situations and people in a new light, one we could not have gained any other way.

With all that is going on in the world, there is a lot that has made people bitter and hardened to the other’s story. So much injustice has been done on all sides are we best to see it as a fact of life? Some of us hate to hear that wrong has been done on all sides, and also hate to hear meddling in other country’s politics has created situations we don’t know how to solve.

We can take a smaller view and look at meddling in other people’s relationships – that doesn’t work well either. Is it possible to live in a live and let live world, to agree to disagree? Have we ever lived in that world? Catholics and Protestants fought to the death but now we live side by side. There was a time not too long ago when a Catholic president of the United States was a big thing.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer

Are we expecting groups in parts of the world to live beside others with different ideologies and beliefs that took the West hundreds of years to come to terms with? A thousand years ago The Hundred Years War between England and France was waging, it started in 1337 and ended in 1453, and England and France both survived.

We might be expecting instant results that can only come with time. We in the West have carved out our place and might think we have the right to meddle in disputes that aren’t our business. Jockeying for position in the world is messy and everyone has a view that makes sense to them, and few acknowledge they are in the wrong even if they are, and often meddlers make things worse, not better.

Why can’t we all just get along? We can’t do it in our families, or our communities, why do we think it is so easy to do it in countries? We don’t only want everyone to get along, we want them to get along so we benefit, and this is the real problem. Dwight Eisenhower warned against establishing a “Military-industrial complex” but the warning wasn’t heeded. So here we are and I for one am trying to take the long view that in a thousand years, the Middle East will live in peace.

For a thousand years in your sight, are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. Psalm 90:4

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never sit. Greek Proverb

Perspective is the way we see things when we look at them from a certain distance and it allows us to appreciate their true value. Rafael E. Pino

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