THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE STRANGE

Life is good, death is bad. That's pretty much everyone's take on that whole life and death thing. Not too many people feel the opposite is true, but there are some. They would be the strange. Stranger still when you realize that these lost souls hold that opinion for years and years, yet never act on their convictions and do away with themselves, thus freeing more oxygen and subway seats for the rest of us. Then there are those who feel that death is good for certain other people, a more common brain malady. Again, few of these people act on their beliefs, content to wish those people dead and hope that someone else is enterprising enough and courageous enough to carry out their morbid fantasies for them. There are those willing to do that, murderers, psychopaths and soldiers, but the last group gets a pass on their killing since it is never their idea to fight wars, usually some pompous old fart who's in charge of them and has serous issues and/or a greedy heart.

That's the way of the world, filled with the good, the bad and the strange. We are a fierce race of beings, we humans. It's all about the passion. We love one another fiercely, hate some people fiercely and kill people fiercely. We sometimes even kill for love, as strange as that sounds. It could be a love affair that blows up in someone's face and twists their mind into thinking that everything will be okay if they kill their rival, the one they love, or both. That's never worked out for anybody ever but it hasn't put a stop to that sort of thing. People who are that far gone mentally rarely think these things through. Either that or they think that they will be the exception that proves the rule. At any rate, their handiwork doesn't get to be called a love crime. A crime of passion, maybe, but there are all kinds of passions swirling around human hearts, not all of them so attractive.

Then there's the killing done for love of country, like that makes it okay. As recently as 64 years ago, the world wrapped up a war that saw 65 million people being slaughtered over nationalistic passions, with none of the participating nations achieving anything close to the goals they set for themselves at the beginning of the war. Cities of rubble canceling out the labor of centuries, decimated populations, gerrymandered national borders and tense standoffs between hostile nuclear-armed rivals wasn't exactly the picture in the minds' eye when the various armies first marched into battle with flags waving, bands playing and maidens blowing kisses at the brave young warriors. God was on their side and they were going to save the world.

After a half dozen years of wholesale slaughter, monumental cruelty and nations laid waste, the hollow eyes of the survivors told a different tale, young men grown old before their time, wasted young women scavenging piles of rubble to feed sickly children and mountains of corpses of innocents joining the millions and millions of fallen soldiers. Didn't seem so glorious anymore and God was nowhere in sight, possibly off in a corner somewhere cringing in remorse over what His children had done to one another, wondering like any parent where He went wrong when a child does something unspeakable. And who could blame Him? The landscape in 1945 was an abomination of death, hatred and destruction on a scale previously unimaginable.

Logic dictates that then would have been a good time to reassess how different nations deal with one another. It was a time when men and women from all over the world were for the first time exposed to people of many different nationalities, and when the guns weren't blazing, got to interact with these strange creatures, and more often than not found out that they weren't so different from themselves after all. They all loved their hometown, Mom's cooking, their sweethearts and wives, their country and wanted a better future for their children. The letters written from the battlefields to home differed only in the languages in which they were written, not in the content. The letters sent in return were also interchangeable in their messages of love, concern for safety and the sharing of routine news of home, family and neighborhood. The wrinkled snapshots carried by every soldier reinforced the universal experience of being a part of humanity.

So, why was the world at each other's throats? What could we do to avoid this happening again? Could the United Nations do what nations themselves had been unable to do forever, to live in peace, to deal with one another with tolerance, understanding and good faith? That is what cried out to be done, what all of mankind wanted more than ever before. It was time to put a stop to the killing forever. Not only logic, but people's hearts demanded this, their souls ached for peace. Some of the conquerors helped rebuild the conquered, hostile dictatorships were turned into peaceful democracies, while others grabbed and enslaved small vulnerable nations and erected an invisible Iron Curtain that would divide former allies for half a century. Logic, goodness and human heartache were losing out to the bad and the strange. The moment had passed for international reconciliation and the world dug in its heels once again waiting for the Third World War.

That never happened, but plenty of other wars filled our spare time, and a hell of a lot of genocide too. So much for learning from our mistakes. And yet the vast majority of people remain loving, earnest and peaceful souls, wanting only to live their lives safe and warm and to give their children a better world than the one they inherited. What's stopping us? Why do we allow our old men to start wars they will never have to fight? Why do we still bury our idealistic young soldiers in faraway lands? Why do mothers the world over weep for their children and curse the grand parades and colored flags that sent them on yet another misguided crusade?

What is this strange thing inside of us, that barbaric force that overrides our love, our goodness and our finest instincts as human beings? Will there always be within us the good, the bad and the strange? That's a battle to be fought one heart at a time, perhaps the only war that matters to humanity, the only war that can ever have a good outcome, the war within each of us to do what is right. We already know what is right and what is wrong, that's not the problem and never was. The problem confronting each of us is to apply that knowledge in every situation we face as a first resort. We already know where our last resort will lead us. We have cried those tears, felt that remorse and swore never again more times than can be counted. Let us swear again and again and again until we get it. Let us wage peace with all the love in our hearts.