Love thy neighbor

NOTE: I got the following in an email from a friend who wants to remain anonymous, because she doesn't want to further inflame an already-ugly situation. I know what the story is, and let me tell you--this woman is a better woman than I, because I'd have shown no mercy in dishing out vengeance for what these "friends" of hers did to her family.

I finally had my “A-ha� moment this morning.

Sometimes it takes longer for those to come along than not, this one took 3 months for me. I have been thinking about the mindset of an evil leader who wants to destroy those who are not like him or her and the intellectual capacity of an evil leader to persuade those who are vulnerable to think like him or her (suicide bombers, terrorist followers). How do these people sleep at night? I assume they sleep very well because they don’t have a conscience. It doesn’t bother them at all, they convince themselves they are right and that all others are wrong. They convince themselves if others don’t think like them, they are stupid & idiots. These people with no conscience live among us, they are killers, pedophiles, have religion in their life, drive a carpool to school, you get the idea. They don’t have a big sign on them that says “I DON’T HAVE A CONSCIENCE.� We can be intelligent ourselves & duped by them.

Well lo & behold, I was duped. I have had some sad turns of my wonderful life over the past few months, and I will gloss over them to make my point. A “great friend� of mine decided that my family had problems, ganged up on us by convincing two other families to think the same. She is, after all, very smart & persuasive. They made some very poor choices and since those were made, they shunned us and our children. Imagine doing something really horrible to someone & then not being able to apologize or own up to your mistakes? I can’t, I guess I have a conscience that rules my life. I am agnostic, so worrying about an after-life isn’t the way I live my life. I worry about my time here on earth & how my actions affect the people around me, These people are duped by their fearless leader into believing they did the right thing, there was no other choice. I believe the other 2 families have a conscience, but now that they have taken the path of their leader, have to justify their actions.

So now I must live among people who followed a leader down a bad path. I am one who believes in forgiveness when forgiveness is asked for. However, in my current circumstances, instead of asking for my forgiveness, they have decided that we must be evil, because we don’t fit into their ideals.

Damn, we are a strong family, a great family. We love each other very much & always extend our love to friends who are willing to let someone new in their lives. We are loyal, giving and warm. I don’t want this event to make any of us bitter and resentful, no matter how difficult that may be. My family now knows shunning, silence and evil from people who claim to have a conscience and this has been passes on to their children as well (innocent products of a situation).

I parallel this situation to Arab children who are told to hold hate signs and brainwashed to hate others who don’t meet the ideals of their leader. They grow up to hate and hence the cycle of violence has a new generation. Wow, what a lesson for my family. We learned to stick together, not be angry, forgive and live our lives to the fullest. We will be fine if we have to live among these people or we move on without ever passing a kind word between all of us again. I learned a valuable lesson on top of all this, anger can drain one of energy and it is much more beneficial to every human to let all anger go and forgive.