On the death of evil
(Soundtrack for this post here)
A friend on Facebook suggested that whether you care about Bin Laden or not, you should remember what you were doing at the time you heard the news. For today is a day that will go down in history.
For me, it was randomly deciding to check FB before heading to bed. Earlier in the day, I've attended my first SCA meeting. I worked on a programming assignment for college. Nothing whatsoever foreshadowed this day's significance.
I turned the TV on. The people were celebrating the killing of a man.
There was once a man who was undoubtedly evil, and unto whom it was done as he would do unto others. Yet he never entered my own life as anything more than a vague threat. To me, he was a lesser risk than a traffic accident.
I felt no joy about his death. I even felt a bit appalled that throughout the following week, people would come to me, asking, "Have you heard the news?". That they would expect me to rejoice over the death of a man I cared so little about.
And yet I felt that something did change, both in me and the world around me.
Yugiu Munenori wrote, "It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down. It is not in cutting people down; it is in killing evil. It is the stratagem of killing the evil of one man and giving life to ten thousand."
I cannot rejoice over the killing, no matter how great is the evil of the man killed. But I can remember the day when an evil died, and I can celebrate the ten thousand people saved.
The night seems a bit brighter now, as if a heavy dark shroud had been lifted off the world for a time.
A friend on Facebook suggested that whether you care about Bin Laden or not, you should remember what you were doing at the time you heard the news. For today is a day that will go down in history.
For me, it was randomly deciding to check FB before heading to bed. Earlier in the day, I've attended my first SCA meeting. I worked on a programming assignment for college. Nothing whatsoever foreshadowed this day's significance.
I turned the TV on. The people were celebrating the killing of a man.
There was once a man who was undoubtedly evil, and unto whom it was done as he would do unto others. Yet he never entered my own life as anything more than a vague threat. To me, he was a lesser risk than a traffic accident.
I felt no joy about his death. I even felt a bit appalled that throughout the following week, people would come to me, asking, "Have you heard the news?". That they would expect me to rejoice over the death of a man I cared so little about.
And yet I felt that something did change, both in me and the world around me.
Yugiu Munenori wrote, "It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down. It is not in cutting people down; it is in killing evil. It is the stratagem of killing the evil of one man and giving life to ten thousand."
I cannot rejoice over the killing, no matter how great is the evil of the man killed. But I can remember the day when an evil died, and I can celebrate the ten thousand people saved.
The night seems a bit brighter now, as if a heavy dark shroud had been lifted off the world for a time.