Picking Battles and Choosing Fights

It’s great to be a principled

person.

It’s good to know that your

morality is superior.

It’s nice to feel that everything

can be explained.

But not everyone feels that way.

Some people are immovable as

mountains. Uncompromising as

the seas and as disrespectful

as age is to dignity.

To want a reason,

an explanation, insight into

why someone does something terrible

is perfectly normal and it’s good you

want to know.

I have found however, and still find,

that the answer isn’t usually very good.

It’s unsatisfying. It’s empty.   Meaningless,

and baffling to the rational person.

Some folks are just bad.

There are those types, those people,

that’ll knock a man down just because they

can, who’ll attempt to assert control over others

in a vain attempt to have control over their

own emptiness; their own moral vacancy.  

There is no reaching them in a casual conversation,

and no just or moral act will show them their

erroneous ways. Some folks are just pricks,

who actually enjoy being pricks due to the chemistry in

their faulty wired brain.

It is great to try and reach them,

it’s good to try and have them explain,

It’s nice to want an answer for how they can

justify themselves.

A leopard doesn’t change its spots

however, and a jerk is a jerk and no

punishment or application of moral

virtue will ever get through.

They feed on their chaos.

It’s best to starve them of

their chaos instead. To hold them at bay

in their pursuit of anarchy.

Passive resistance against a tide

of inhumanity.

Action moments must be

timed carefully with bullies, braggarts,

cowards and chickens.  Sometimes taking

an action against them, at the wrong time,

leaves them enraged and bitter without

having learned anything.

Kindness in the face of overwhelming adversity

can sometimes go further than a night in jail,

a punch in the face, a kick in the rump or even

a well thought out, coherent, logical, conversation.

Sometimes.  Not always.

Wisdom is knowing when to fight,

and when not to. Figuring out when to

apply it takes patience and courage, even

when the crowds are screaming for bloody

revenge.  

Sometimes all is failure and there is no

road to redemption. Then you write them

off and go on with your life,

knowing some souls are too damaged to

ever redeem.