To Plato - much appreciated

Submitted by Michel (United States), Jan 30, 2007 at 14:58

You're a wise man, my friend.

This was indeed the first blog I ever engaged in, but if this thing is representative or, as you state, not even so bad, holy marroni, then this is not, what I signed up for.

Look, as funny as that may sound, they were not utterly besides their shoes. My life was adventurous, to say the least. The only thing is that there is nothing romantic about it. - most certainly not the movie, where the hero rides int o the sunset with the beautiful woman at his side. One pays a hell of a price and most of all, if I could go back in time, I'd take a different route and have a simple life, a family of my own and never see the outside of my village other than the usual vacation in Mallorca, Italy or France. I envy those people deeply, as my (emotional) scars may never heal.

While I defy any form of "preaching ", believe in the principle of leading by example, I did try to carefully share some personal experiences and my own individual conclusions based upon them. Very carefully tried to reason for "moderation", as so many of their approaches have terrible consequences, some of which I have indeed seen first -hand. That was a mistake and definitely not appreciated. I underestimated the level of intolerance. I was not even granted the basic respect any human being should be entitled to.
History repeats itself again and again - who am I to have the arrogance to even try to change anyone's mind.

There is no question, that I have seen more bad than good. But, amazingly, the good I have seen, was mainly in places surrounded by unspeakable misery. That includes the Middle East, but also your region, which is, if I understood you correctly, South America. If I hadn;t experienced that kindness and warmth by people who have absolutely nothing, but shared whatever they scrambled up with me anyway, I probably would have given up on us humans a long time ago.

Like my dad, who woke up 40 years after Mauthausen screaming of nightmares, I am haunted by some of the things I was exposed to. The only way out, in order to maintain your own sanity, is to control, what you can control - your own individual attitude, way of thinking, reaction to what you encounter. In other words, I can not control their bitterness, lack of respect, anger or hatred, but only my reaction to it..

I've seen enough of that and hence decided not to add to it by becoming bitter myself. If one allows that hatred becomes the main drving force and only see the negs, but never the positives, then one adds insult to injury and hence you bring yourself down, as if there was'nt enough crap out there already.

I had enough confrontation in my life, which is why I decided not to engage any further here. An intelligent debate is fun and refreshing, but under the belt attacks become boring after a while. You are one lone voice of sanity here, Plato, but you are being drowned out by the yelling and screaming of the fanatics.

Thanks for your effort to motivate me. Albeit, while I am not angry or emotional about all this, I am nevertheless exhausted, tired and mostly bored by now.

Sadly Mo or any other modern Muslim has not joined the forum. Can you really blame them? They'll be shred to pieces by their own as well as the fanatics here. Of course that will now be used as proof for their position. Naturally, answering your tough, yet respectful questions, is even more difficult and hence adds another dimension to the deplorable silence.

In conclusion, all I can see now is another round of facts and evidence with you on one side and all the others on the other. As used in one of my analogies, I will not become the silent bystander and onlooker in a gangrape in a NY subway, with you as victim.

Hence, I bid you farewell and once again my respect and gratitude for giving me yet another reason to hope.

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