Kindness: Someone Has Go First

Jared Witt   |   July 22, 2020

Someone has to go first.
 
Someone has to be first to sing a new song.
 
Someone has to be first to forgive.
 
Someone has to be first to bend a little and concede the tired point.

Someone has to be first to say, "I hate your premise and love your person."

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Maybe you actually are right and they’re wrong
 
So? Someone has to be first to jump off this listing, faltering ship called the USS Ego and into the Sea of Tranquility known as the Spirit.
 
Yes, the Sea of Tranquility. It’s no accident that anyone who has ever traveled to space has been overcome with the fragile oneness of all things.
 
From up there, the countries and the parties are silly, unimaginable things, bickering and scurrying about in self-important microscopy.
 
Anyone who picks a political tribe or a religion, and says “This! This is the one” is like a dog barking at the mailman, no sense of proportion.
 
They’ve gotten all wound up by the ongoings of an impossibly tiny blue dot and convinced themselves that this is all there is.
 
Maybe you are actually right, and they’re actually wrong. Maybe you are!
 
Yeah? Then What? What is rightness and wrongness in the face of the cosmic mystery?
 
"But...but it's nothing small," you say. Hatred, violence, murder.
 
What will you do about it then? Will you hate? Will you become violent? Will you murder?
 
“That’ll show’m,” says the Montague. “That’ll show’m,” says the Capulet.
 
Perhaps your adversary actually is wrong and self-deceived and damaging.
 
What will you do? Stand your high ground to show everyone how low he is?
 
Then congratulations! You’ve just out hypocrite-ed the hypocrite. You're both hurling through space on a tiny marble.
 
“See how open-minded and accepting we are?" you say. "Not like them.”
 
That trick is as old as war. Demons don’t mind whether they sneak in the side door or the front.
 
In fact, your adversary is wrong and self-deceived and damaging,
 
And he is “very good” and insecure and deeply damaged.
 
You will not forgive him because he is right.
 
You will forgive him, because someone has to be the first.
 
We’ve been winning arguments and scoring points against the other side for ages; since the first tribesman wandered off his arbitrary circle of dirt onto the other’s arbitrary circle of dirt and hurled a spear in terror.
 
And this terrifying game has gone on ever since.
 
Have you forgotten that it’s just a game?
 
Even kids know when the game is over.
 
So go prop your glove on your head and get on with the serious business of orange slices and Capri-Sun.
 
In the vast solitude of eternity, the winner has already been forgotten.
 
Don’t be confused, when people say, “This is my stance” or “Here’s what I believe” or “I’m a (enter name of party, religion or some other tribal allegiance).”
 
If the next thing you see from them doesn’t have the stamp of patience, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, and love, then they’re just droning on and on the way the world always has.
 
But if you are patient. If you are forbearing. If you show mercy. You’re the first to sing a new song.
 
And someone has to go first.

That way, no one has to be first.
 
Cheers and Peace,
 
Jared