Innocence.
I made a mistake and left the freezer unplugged. This meant I had to throw a few pounds of food away. I am deeply distressed by my error and the resulting waste of a precious thing. The food was placed in the freezer to save it for a time of need. I am judging myself harshly, imposing a sentence of penitent reflection. My small error sits on the counter, mocking me. How loud it mocks and for how long is a thing I control. How much remorse should a human being feel when he or she has committed a habit-thought-crime? There comes a point to realize that remorse, guilt, penury, sorrow solve no problem. In order to continue living and to continue living well, I must shut the mocking up. I must close the mouth of discontent and shutter the eyes of judgement. It was a small error and we are an error-prone species. I must rescue my soul by learning and making attempts to do better in future.
A small error. On a trip to Mars or the Moon, small errors are crucial ones. “Ooops, I forgot to factor this equation and the 1/1000th of a black, small, curly hair difference is going to mean that we like, totally miss the target and die in space!” Tossing out three pounds of ghastly liquid tomatoes and one ear of corn will not cause us irreconcilable death, today. It may make a difference, some still distant tomorrow…it is regrettable, but what price is true enough to pay? What value does dwelling on the error offer the world at this moment on this day? Some folk would not be too upset by this, some folk would not even think about it. Maybe those folk are the ones who smoke cigarettes, drink beer, shout at others in the drug store or bank and drive wanton SUV’s toward the Wal-Mart of oblivion that awaits modern civility. Well.
Fortunately, I believe that those same ‘some folk’ are fewer and fewer as time goes forward. That is a good thing, to a point. We are, most of us, concerned that our home is changing and by our own hand. There is less food, less air, less water, less cool temperature, less civil discourse, more unreliable systems…it does seem that we are very likely in the end days. My cousin says, in his ‘church’ mode, that: “These are the end days, Brothers and Sisters! The end days began in 1948, when Israel became a state!” The end days? Israel? 1948? Wow! Is that an oversimplified assessment of complex situations? Yeah.
We can point and blame in a lot of different directions. We can start with ourselves, in the myriad ways we committ error. We get cross with a recalcitrant child, a balky faucet, a dimming computer screen, a mildly de-tuned radio, a broken finger nail… and, an almost insignificant, carelessly caused, loss of food. I am cross with myself. I can be cross with others, too. I am one of the we who say silly things that hurt others. We comment in italics or all-caps on Facebook as an ill-conceived attempt at adamant conversation. Those are mistakes. We unplug the freezer and forget to plug it back in. We make mistakes. I made a mistake that cost the universe a small amount of sustenance, that sent particles and bits back into the ether as a different form. Now, the precious saved food becomes a living place for bacteria, in turn a small amount of loose nitrogen, minerals and offers a bit of methane gas to waft upwards into the atmosphere. Said methane possibly contributes to a general, global warming of earth. Mea culpa.
Mea culpa, I have guilt. I am not innocent. I am responsible. I have, or my ancestors have, eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In my case, it were no laughing, present serpent who shone bright eyes in my direction as I erred. I was not blinded and thus led astray…I was human and forgot to plug the freezer back in. It is the same crime, though. I bear weight of my crime as I bear the guilt of being human, of being a part of the mess. I am guilty-by-proxy of lots. For one example: the colonialism that destroyed so many cultures and systems on our beautiful earth. For another: The continued use of fossil fuels that clouds our bright blue sky with deadly vapour. Yah. I am guilty-by-proxy, I am guilty by fact. Mea culpa.
I am guilty and I am innocent. I am learning from my mistakes. It is a painful process, learning. You could say that putting a hand in the fire teaches you that fire is hot. You were innocent of self-harming behaviour when you put a hand in the fire, but you did do that. Now, is the time for learning. I learned that I should not be careless about plugging the freezer back in. We learn that fire is hot, we learn that colonialism is a bad thing, we learn that hate destroys ourselves more than it does our victim, we learn…we are learning. It is a changing world, because we learn. It is a slow turning world and the learning is a slow process. Forward movement, future seem impossible, with the number of mistakes made, the number of people erring, the amount of food wasted.
Step back and look again at what seems impossible, insurmountable. I threw out a bit of food, but was successful at the necessary cleaning of the freezer. There is war enough and gloomy outlooks, but the wars are subsiding a bit, in fact. There is disease enough and dying innocents, but medicine improves, daily. The earth is heating up and drying out, the storms severe, but we are still alive. We are learning, growing, guilty, innocent. We are all things. All things are possible. I have plugged the freezer back in and will re-fill it…on we go.
Robert On The Air 