Forgiveness not exist without reason. And yet, when giving judgment, is it not much easier to find reason even if unfound or unproven?
Since a child, I have always been drawn to understand why people do what they do. It is not only why someone has committed an act, but to search the source as to why.
Many could beg to differ, wanting to always find reason from one’s background or past as to why choices and thus, actions, have been made or words spoken.
My findings are that while there are those who clearly found their mind, body, heart, and spirit to necessitate survival, there are those whose lives were catered with love and goodness. Still, under both cases, the unthinkable occurs.
The child that could have become an exceptionally upstanding citizen becomes one of the most unquestionable psychologically ill.
I think of Johannesburg where I recall the son crying on the grounds where his father led genocide.
A corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit whilst one good, brings forth good. Is this correctly interpreted as so?
And yet, how does evil come from known good and good come from known evil?
The question that befuddles me then is, is it thus, the fruit or its surroundings thereafter?
After all, place a good fruit in a bushel of all rotten, does the good fruit get lost amongst all bad? Will it be seen, found, and thus, taken out as still the one good fruit?
Do we just assume all bushels with rottenness fruits have no good?
Do we trust a bushel presumed good contain all that is good within?
I have learned that survivors from extreme mental, physical, emotional, and even, spiritual trauma, can choose to heal and move forward from such fallen times.
I have seen children deemed as the troublemaker at school or home become successful in time, possessing and exhibiting admiral leadership.
Just the same, one given all reasons to do good and be good, to the surprise of those who have only witnessed and known good, decide corruption.
Why? Who is to answer? Who is to blame?
Upon my readings and own questioning, when asked how, when, and why disturbing actions begun, while how and when can be recalled, the why seems to be the most unanswered or unfound.
Are we alone in such confusion?
Do animals exhibit evil?
I believe I mentioned in a past reflection of mine how my Papa was sad to have to end the life of one of our chickens. I still recall him holding the chicken and talking quietly to it.
I knew, even around the age of five, upon not seeing the chicken any longer and Papa sneaking in the chicken’s eggs to hatch with others, I would no longer ever see that chicken again.
That one chicken would lay her eggs, turn around and crack them with her beak. I watched as a witness to this inexplicable behavior.
I don’t speak chicken language or surely, I would have asked, “Why?” Even then, would any answer justify the act?
Papa dared not destroy any eggs left unbroken. He gave the offspring a chance to redeem their own goodness.
Do animals exhibit emotions?
Papa had taken in a stray cat that soon had a litter of kittens. A beautiful, light-pink pawed, fully white-furred one of her bunch did not make it even when Papa tried to breathe life into it.
Papa and I buried the lifeless outside.
The next morning, I found that same lifeless one laying next to all her siblings, under the warmth of the mother.
The mother did not once look up at me. She just kept cleaning and feeding each one of her newly birthed kittens- the lifeless included.
Even in burying the same kitten again, I sensed that the same happening would occur the next day.
I was correct in my assumption.
This time, Papa carefully took that beautiful, light-pink pawed, fully white-furred kitten for a drive. I knew he had gone to bury it far from the mother’s reach.
I don’t speak cat, but this time I didn’t have to ask, “Why?” Sometimes, you just understand.
Do animals exhibit rebellion?
Riding on a beautiful black horse named Prince, in sixth grade, I was instructed to kick him hard with the back of my heels when he refused to lift his head up and move on while stooping down to drink water.
I couldn’t. I waited (and apparently made everyone else wait) for him to finish drinking. Prince followed the rest thereafter and returned me safely back to the stables.
I thought back to Prince and wondered how he would have behaved had he been Laredo I had ridden on the edge of a cliff in Mexico.
I have run into more actions of the world since those times. Each time, I have tried to always find reason as to “why”.
There are actions that when given differing vantage points, a justified reason can be found.
When a five years-old child spits on my supervisor at a child trauma center I volunteered in during college, she showed me love and understanding by hugging and holding the child to the best she could, clearly swallowing her own pride and fury.
The burned gang writings on the child’s arms spoke the need for forgiveness.
When I asked the security guard to release a child on his knees crying and pleading to not have police called after stealing candy from a supermarket I worked at, I was silenced upon seeing the same child found stealing again.
This time, the child had not cried as police came in to take him away.
When a student tells me an adult spit on him in the past for no reason he could understand and tells me he vowed no one to ever do that to him again, I believed him.
All that was in my power was to ask the child to win by letting go of such planted anger.
I have a Master’s in Psychology and while I have contemplated several times in the past to get certified as a psychologist, there had always been something pulling me back from such step toward that path. Sometime this year, I believe to have arrived at knowing my resistance.
The loneliest of all people are those who cannot seek such psychological help because of not just time and money, but fear.
To fear labels is real.
We want to know and understand why. If found and presented, do we want to be judged by the why, however?
Is the why who we all and always are?
We may think to not be a chicken, a cat or even a horse, but are we released of such vulnerability?
While it is difficult to not judge the mindset of expressed behaviors, can we really only just stand back and watch?
I learned in Mock Trial and further studies that labels haunt- labeling those for life like a scarlet letter, having the power to deem one mentally or emotionally unstable.
In someone’s craziest of actions, the rest are left to find meaning. In search of meaning, do we then inadvertently judge.
If we don’t, however, how do we then protect the good?
I realize the understanding and gaining more knowledge of the world, how it thinks, and why it does, has purely been for my own growth in having sensible meaning.
That understanding continues to lead me toward greater need to arrive at one single answer for right now, I have yet to have one.
The more I learn, the more I realize how little I understand.
There seems to be no arrival of coming to fully comprehend every action, regardless of how many more times I read or watch behaviors.
The motivations run from desire for attention to a healing or fulfillment from a fixation of the heart, mind, body, and spirit.
I recall back when I stood in an aisle of the downtown library I worked at during high school, finally getting to read about the notorious, Jeffrey Dahmer, searching only for an answer to “why”.
Dahmer recalled his childhood on a peaceful farm. His parents, he stated, were not to blame for who he had become. His actions? He simply recalled how he started from hurting animals on the farm.
I didn’t bother finishing that book. I had my answer just like I have searched throughout other actions.
I think, could we have stopped the future of such heinous crimes committed?
Had someone intercepted such behaviors early, would the ill behavior still have continued?
How early do we deem a fruit to be nearly rotten? At a rancid state or even if bruised? If we allow, do we subliminally also risk?
While we do not speak chicken, cat, or horse language, are we alien to good and evil?
Do we forgive differently- look away as to deny or not see under the basis of what we want to believe?
In judging, are we fair and equal- our assumptions leading us to a guaranteed right?
Do all who witness or powerlessly partake choose to follow such actions to continue such pattern?
Are all sons to become their fathers? Are all fathers to create the same sons?
Forgiveness. Judgment. Are we clear?
