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It’s easy to assume that you have only two choices and ignore the opportunity to be your better self.
So, it’s Gaza or Israel, is it? Who is it gonna be? Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?
I see good and bad guys everywhere. The bad guys are angry and afraid — understandably. They’ve been targeted. They’ve seen loved ones brutalized and killed. They remember this suffering vividly. It goes back generations. Many generations. They are victims and they want revenge. But they don’t call it revenge. They call it justice.
But the bad guys aren’t really bad. They’re shell-shocked. They’re confused. They can’t see straight and they can’t think straight. They are tightly wound. And you know what? I can’t blame them. I actually don’t blame them, but I very much want to stop their foolish violence and to end their understandable but terribly destructive anger.
The two sides aren’t the Palestinian Arabs against the Israeli Jews. The battle is between love and hate. If we look closely, and take a few steps back, we can see that it’s not good versus evil: it’s sanity versus foolishness.
At the moment, and all too often in history, we lack the imagination that’s required for wisdom. We believe we only have two choices — and often those choices look like bad or worse. And when we…
