20/20 Hindsight

I wrote this so long ago the keyboard only had fourteen letters. At least that's how long ago it feels. An army of lovers cannot be beaten; that was Rosa Luxemburg's belief as she and Karl Liebknecht led their Spartacist League comrades into the streets of Berlin on behalf of all workers everywhere, but (pragmatically) mostly in Germany, as World War I was ending, both for Kaiser Wilhelm and Imperial Germany. 

Despite their sincerity and well-meaning, they lost a lot more than just the discussion to the overwhelming logic, eloquence and (most especially) arms of the Freikorps, as Germany began a descent into madness that drove all of Europe and nearly all of the world into a darkness that lasted until May of 1945.

Being a nice person who means well, goes only so far. I visit an endocrinologist who is probably a very nice man with many, if not all, of his other patients. Being the persnickety and prickly person that I am (otherwise known as 'a pain in a well-known body part'), I can't afford the luxury of having a buddy as my physician.

I need someone who will scare me into doing the right thing to avoid punishment and/or conflict because while the reward for doing the right thing should be the knowledge that you have done the right thing, it never seems to ring the bell for me.  

Neither of us is going shoe-shopping or picking out drapes for the waiting room (though, sitting out there the last time, I couldn't help but feel the current ones make the chip on my shoulder look big; but I digress). 

Life is choices and maybe one of the bigger ones is: do you surround yourself with people who mean well, but don't necessarily do well? (I call them stumblebunnies. I used to have another name for them, but my wife made me stop using it in front of the kids) Or do you embrace those who can get done that which you, and they, feel needs to be done? 

The right thing isn't always the popular thing. Last week's crowd at the parade in your honor are now an angry mob howling for your head. Feel free to review the New Testament for an illustration of that. What else can you do except to be true to the vision you have of what "right" is? 

As Rosa less famously, but more presciently, noted, "Freedom is always, and exclusively, for the one who thinks differently." She could be describing these times in which we live. Be an exclamation, not an explanation.
-bill kenny