I Saw, Today.

I saw, today, the face of hate.

And I don't call it the face of hatred, because it very much a verb, an action, a living and breathing and breathing down your neck entity when you get up close.

I was caught off guard.

When you do something that in the back of your mind you know is wrong, it's at least expected. When you read about it in some newspaper, it's abstract and gives you some detachment. When you see it in people who are just ignorant and need the strange twisted comfort of bigotry, you just shake your head and move on. You see some idiot racist yelling out the window of a passing car and you are simply reminded of how much further the world needs to go.

But then you see it in the eyes of someone you thought was a friend. You see in people that have brains, and know how to use them. You see hate from people against others, not because of what their actions, but just because they are different. Because of how they are born. Because of the lives they have they have to live, and that they might have a little bit of pride or confidence or the strength of faith that they are no better or worse than the next person. And you see hate against them, and any who dare to support their course, and their cause.

And then, in that sour moment, you cannot imagine how people who actually on other occasions do have some values and intelligence, can also have such a propensity for animosity. It's one thing to see a moron with a bedsheet on his head and a triple liking for the eleventh letter of the alphabet. It is quite another moment like that in the Roald Dahl adult short story when a young child is forever damaged when he sees a mother rabbit eat her baby.

My forehead has been creased for too many hours and it is tired. I wonder too much why things are like this. I wander into questions that cannot be answered. But it is still good to ask them. That's why, all in all, I'm glad I'm shocked. When the time comes when I'm not, it will be a warning that cynicism has too far eaten into deep recesses of my, for lack of a better word, soul.

We must all still have faith in change. We must have courage for the future, by standing firm in the present in the blast of absurdity in reality. We must have trust in the value of redemption, without the other kind of pride, the one which fosters infections of darkness. We must still want our happy endings, and feel like something is still not complete when that cadence in life does not provide it.

We must value the value of being caught off guard.

Especially in days like today.

I saw, today, the face of hate.