Thoughts
The winning streak
There are a few things as hilariously funny as a narrowly averted disaster. There’s the laughter itself — and then there’s the release of tension, the slight hysterics, the golden feeling that yes, your guardian angel sneaked one past the karmic gods. Way to flip good ol’ fate the bird there, buddy!
No matter what you do afterwards, be it work or leisure, there’s always that sweet taste in your mouth. You can’t fail. You lead a charmed life. Once more for the home team! Properly managed, that feeling could carry you onwards like a wave, reinforced with each new success, rolling over small failures – just flukes, really, this here is my day, sonny. It feels so good it’s addictive, and I bet many a gambler are doing it just for that total glow they get when everything feels just right and, like Mel Gibson in Maverick, you don’t need to look at that last card. You know it’s the ace of spades.
The funny part? We narrowly avoid thousands of disasters daily. The misstep you recovered from and promptly forgot about. The tailgater that hit the brakes just before you did. The revolving door that missed your hand with a fraction of an inch to spare. The freshly infected H1N1 carrier that remembered to put his hand over his mouth when he sneezed next to you. But none of them count, because we notice none of them.
Sometimes I wonder if luck has anything at all to do with it. What if luck is genetic, is something we got from ancestors with a history of being in the right place at the right time for some of the time, and in the wrong place at the right time for the rest of the time? What if that fabled human intuition – of which women are supposed to have loads – is a genetic characteristic reinforced by the natural selection of the luckiest bastards of the bunch?
That might explain why we laugh at the narrow escape. It’s nice to know our luck still holds.
The blindness of the righteous
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary doth define righteous as follows:
1: acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin
2 a: morally right or justifiable <a righteous decision> b: arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality <righteous indignation>
Tomes have been written about the first interpretation of the word. According to some religions, there are no righteous people in the world; we are all sinners here. Some of us became sinners just by being born. Others are working very hard on it as we speak. It is an interesting topic, and I might come back to it on another occasion.
No, it is rather the second meaning of the word that I would reflect upon in the following lines. It’s the “morally right and justifiable” deed that “arises from an outraged sense of justice or morality”. An outraged sense. Righteous. Right.
And when did outrage ever led to anything even remotely positive? A lynching mob may consider itself righteous in its outrage, no doubt fuelled by a keen sense of justice, or perhaps morality. The only problem is, justice and morality are subjective, relative values. Being an abhorrent human in the name of your outrage is never a good thing, regardless of how righteous you might feel. Because, believe you me, the feeling will pass. And if you have a shred of human decency, you will shoulder your burden of guilt for whatever outrageous deeds you enacted in your righteous rage. Righteous people are bulls before the cape. They’re blind to the consequences.
In Rwanda, 15 years ago, we saw again the rise of the righteous. Neighbours killing neighbours. Friends killing friends. One million people died under the knives of those who imagined that truth, justice and indeed, divine right were on their side. Let us all spare them a thought this day.
And next time you feel that righteous anger bubbling in your throat, take a moment – and consider the consequences.
Empty room
There’s an empty room with your name on it.
The door is ajar, moving slightly…Â just a trick of the eye, perhaps. Soft pale light frames the opening, pulsating gently in an irregular pattern. The handle is still warm, but cooling fast. I think it will be ice cold by morning.
The empty room beckons me, but I dare not enter. It is your room — it says so right there, on the door. Scrawled hastily with a nail file, one word — your name — and a dire warning. Lasciate ogni speranza…
I steal a glimpse through the slight opening. A wall: whitewashed, neutral, reflecting light in tune with the broken bulb. Upon it, a spider built its nest, and now it’s waiting. Waiting in vain, for there is only I who’s left alive, and I’m not coming in. The spider is staring at me.
Half a vase crawls into view, within it a dozen dried roses. They used to be red. I can see their leaves, almost crumbling, frozen scream around the last evaporating drop. They’re brown now, the colour of old blood. The colour of nails endlessly scratching a brick wall.
I used to know this room. In my mind I can almost see it. The vision is hazy and incomplete though, like the glimmer of distant mirages glimpsed through the midday sun. I open my eyes. The spider mocks me silently. I think it’s already dead — chitinous carapace stuck in its own dusty web, moving gently with the current. Death is ironic nowadays.
There’s an empty room, sanctified in your name.
Who are you?
I cannot remember.
