Thursday, June 11, 2009

At the end

We want to believe that age brings wisdom, some sense of how everything fits together. Or failing that, equanimity, grace. Maybe just mellowness.

Beyond the guard who was killed too young and for no good reason, that's the nastiest shock in the Holocaust Museum Shooting. James von Brunn has lived 88 years. He's seen the horrors of war and probably some acts of heroism that transcend it. He's lived through Depression before and seen the country rebound from it. And from his life's experiences, all he's taken away is a list of targets.

Age can bring wisdom, of course. But finding it takes effort, and it requires you to reach out. The attacker of the Holocaust Museum is a worst case scemario of the kind of ingrown hate that can result from the failure to do that.

3 comments:

susan said...

This is yet another prime example of worst case scenarios being acted out in the real world. There are crazy people and immature people (age has nothing to do with those but you would think follow-through would be compromised) and what the future may remember about America. India introduced Buddhism which the US, millenia later, countered with Gunnism.

Ben said...

Gunnism's not a bad word for it. He ran amok because he thought the gummint was going to take away his freedom by taking his guns. Now they pretty much have to take away his freedom, his guns, and any chance he'd have of walking on green grass for the rest of his life. Am I missing something?

susan said...

No, you're not.

No Friday random ten? Still probs with i-pod?