One of my favorite expressions has always been 'no single drop of rain feels responsible for the flood which follows.' Yes, I imagine for some it sounds like an uptown version of 'you never which straw breaks the camel's back' (made possible by a grant from Camel Chiropractors, a leisure time activity of Lawrence of Arabia, Inc.) but I most appreciate the implied sense of an absence of personal responsibility inherent in the former.
Much of what we are now is where we were when. And I offer that in tandem with the observation about a raindrop's responsibility when I agree with so many who are concerned at how fear both individually and collectively makes us hurried and hateful in our thoughts and deeds.
Sometimes we rush to judgment and make decisions and take actions that we later realize cannot be undone. Living with the consequences of those things that we do and also fail to do can shape us for years and decades that follow. As the branch is bent, so grows the tree.
I'm told this was a rainy day in Berlin on this date in 1933 when the Reichstag, voting its fears instead of hopes, conferred dictatorial powers on a Chancellor who had first assumed office less than six weeks earlier, Adolph Hitler.
-bill kenny
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