I tell ya what... this post by Sarah Hatter is perhaps one of my favorite passages ever written by a blogger.. or maybe just a favorite passage I've come upon in general reading.
I was just looking through a bunch of random quotes that I have saved from a variety of sources, and found that link... I guess there really wasn't just *one quote* from that passage that I could pickout, because I stand firmly behind every word in that passage. It's probably one of the most heartfelt things I've read that I can *really* identify with.
"For the past year I've been struggling to reconcile the things I think in my heart with the things I encounter in real life, and it's a battle I fear I'm losing. How can I continue to expect that people will do me no harm when all around me are people doing just that, slip-shod even, as if all humanity has their eyes closed and is swinging madly at some mythic pinata. We're all just so careless these days we'll do anything for that tiny piece of candy. We're so unaware of the needs of people around us, even those closest to us we claim to love suffer the brunt of our coldness and self-centered oblivion.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm wasting my goodness on people who don't deserve it or maybe I'm choosing the wrong people to love. But even that boils down to a very selfish mentality that it's up to me to pick and choose who's worthy of my time and effort and everyone else is just going to have to fend for themselves. That defeats the whole purpose of unconditional love, you can't claim to be benevolent and withhold goodness from people who don't deserve it just because they've hurt you in the past.
If the world actually worked like our inane human logic tells us it should, we would have a balanced universe of good and bad and there would be no battles of what was fair or not. It is not fair that when you hurt me you act as if I am to blame for having feelings. It is not fair that when I love you my care and concern is abused for your own good and you never return any of it to me. It is not fair that I try and try and try and have absolutely nothing to show for it. If the world actually worked like my heart tells me it should, I would never have to think such things about fairness or what we deserve or what we think we deserve for what we've done.
And when you start to think about it, you realize that the good things we're allotted may just be that we're alive right now still, we get a heartbeat and functioning brain and a soul. Maybe the good thing I get from whatever it is I've done is that I have a heart brimming with love for my friends and family, even if sometimes they don't reciprocate that love, however unfair that might feel. And I learned early on in my adulthood the power and importance of forgiveness, even when forgiving someone might hurt you more than they ever did."
If I had to pick one quote from that passage by Sarah Hatter... I guess *that* would be it.
Lin *
Jason
Sarah
Phil