I Believe

I remember, a few days after 9/11, I was reading Time magazine, and there was an editorial in which said that what was required now was rage, a "Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury", to strike back at the people who had done that horror to us. I remember cutting the editorial out of the magazine, pasting it into my journal, and writing on the adjacement page "In fighting monsters, do not become one."

I stand by that.

I believe in righteousness. I believe in justice, and compassion, and freedom, and yes, I am willing to die for them.

But dying for a cause is easy. To live each day of the rest of your life suffering every insult for a cause... that is honorable, that takes courage, that requires the something of God in you.

Never the less, I'm no good at it. I lack the patience, the determination and the bravery to actually pull through. I'm soft and weak and I prefer creaturely comforts to the genuine stress and rigors of putting my ass on the line for what I espouse.

I keep saying to myself that a time will come to do that, a time will come when I need to step forward, a time will come when I will be the lonely voice, but not now, not this time, not here.

And finally, I've backed myself into a corner. Here I am again, and I can stand up and fight the good fight, or I can give up and run away back to comforts.

What will I choose?