Susan Wilkinson
For Unsplash+
Necessary Evil
The idea of “necessary evil”
Is only plausible if you
Mistakenly equate evil with pain.
Reject the premise, then
Evil is never necessary.
Pain, on the other hand, is a different story
For human life to even exist
There is the matter of the
Pain of childbirth
[Notice to all women
but especially my wife, my daughter, sister-in-law, and my three nieces,
who are all still living and thus can undoubtedly
find me wherever I tried to hide:
I do hereby submit and testify
that I, a mere male,
have very little, if anything,
to say about the pain of childbirth,
except to offer an apology to my wife,
which even she recognizes (on good days) is unnecessary
since I only indirectly caused the pain, and
it was worth it, as anyone who knows our children
and brand-new grandaughter can attest.]
Pain is routinely experienced as a
Sometimes necessary,
Though not sufficient,
Aspect of normal life:
Physical pain:
Setting a broken arm
Pulling or filling an infected tooth
The mere fact of growing in adolescence
Nerves firing to indicate damage to tissue
Emotional pain:
Loneliness
Rejection
Insufficiency,
Some of which is experienced as part of the natural human condition.
Granted, the connection between evil and pain is well-established.
A major aspect of evil is intentionally inflicting unnecessary pain.
So can we stop with the “necessary evil” comments and
Use “evil” only when we mean “evil”?
Much is at stake because evil abounds, and
Much of this abounding evil is portrayed as natural, even necessary, by
Those who
Use evil as a weapon,
And those who
Are too stupid or gullible or politically motivated or morally bankrupt to
Realize that they are pawns of evildoers
When they are enablers or accomplices of those
Perpetuating “necessary evils.”
This Fooling with Words
Some days it seems senseless
This fooling with words
At least a waste of time
Precious time I now
Have less of while fooling
With words when I could
Be putting words together
To market or teach
Or even manage or
Preach or something that’s
Practical, anything
Practically speaking
That pays some bills, but no!
For even as I
Write about the utter
Senselessness that is
Fooling with words I am
Filled with the sense that
Words...
And it no longer seems
Senseless, this fooling
With words...
Until it does
(With thanks to Bill Moyers who wrote a book about poetry called, Fooling With Words)
Gratitude
Life is a gift
We do nothing to be born
In infancy, we would die without care
DNA is a gift of two parents
Regardless of how those two
Sources of DNA combined to become us
We spend our lives making something with our DNA
But that it is our DNA
Does not mean that it is in our control
It is a gift
To “nature” we add “nurture” (our “second nature”)
Which is also gift
Inspiration, motivation, patience, impatience
Prodding and pulling us along our life cycle
Making time and marking time
All gifts we either
Accept or not
Recognize or ignore
Of this learned behavior
Gratitude becomes essential to life, or not
Learned first as please
And thank you
Expanded to you’re welcome
The parent thing is working
If three of the first words your toddler learns are
Peas, tanks, and whek
Used with increasingly less prodding with
Approximately appropriate timing and context
Then there are a series of gratitude road bumps
Associated with the “twos” (as in “the terrible…”)
Adolescence (the real thing (non-pre-)), and
Young adulthood
Through which some
But not all
Emerge recognizing that we
Are not the center of the universe
Or even the better half
The mark of the successful emergence from
Life’s version of the Bermuda Triangle
Is gratitude
Remembering (without having to be reminded) to say
Please, thank you, and you’re welcome