Candles

 Today was a day of history. People say that just like how they remembered the exact second they found out about Pearl Harbor, JFK, or 9/11, they will too remember what they were doing the day Bin Laden was killed. I'm more concerned about what they are doing after.

Simple fact, I am abroad. I am a drop of American amongst a vast sea of international. I only read in the papers of people celebrating in the streets that "a monster will finally rot in hell." Taking too literal the metaphor of dancing on someone's grave people were so ready to don tap shoes that a sea burial was needed. Why such rage? Ire? Vehemence?
Because three thousand friends, family members, co-workers and otherwise human beings were lost at a mans' words.

 But humans are truly a diverse lot. Eva Kor, a spit-fire of a woman who survived the Holocaust in Auschwitz under Dr. Mengele. The Angel of Death did unspeakable things to his "patients". Eva Kor learned this first hand as her and her twin were subjected to surgical horrors. Things that would ruin the mind and soul of a person.
Ruined the lives of three thousand friends, children, grandchildren and human beings all at this one mans' words.

Eva Kor is still alive. So is her twin sister Miriam. They are not ruined, but surely broken. For many years Eva worked to put herself back together. She moved. She got married.  It took forty years, but standing on the ground where her family was torn from her outside of a cattle car, she forgave. With an Auschwitz doctor by her side she formally forgave those who had almost ruined her life. She said offering her forgiveness healed her, but it did not mean she would forget. Nor did it change anything that had happened. She lived.
I don't often think on coincidences, but learning about Eva today seems to me as a good a reason as ever to pass on this idea.

Terrible things happen in life. Tragic, horrid, mind-bending things. But hating only inflames them. When you hate, you only perpetrate a circle. When you forgive, you end it.