Endurance and Advancement

Jim Abbot ws born without a right hand. Fortunately, he pitched left handed. Very effectively, in fact, over a ten year major league career. When throwing the baseball, Abbot hung his glove on the end of his right arm. Immediately after releasing the ball, he inserted his left hand into the glove, ready to catch the ball. It was really quite impressive.

Then there's the surfer girl in Hawaii whose arm was bitten off by a shark,and who soon thereafter was back on her surf board, in the water, with a smile on her heroic face.

Not to mention the guys who come home from war with no legs, then end up winning marathons on artificial ones.

I once had a job in a high school pushing a kid in a wheelchair, as a special ed assistant. He wouldn't push his own chair, though he was perfectly capable of it. I reminded him that the winner of the Boston marathon every year is somebody in a wheelchair, a separate category, because a wheelchair is a great advantage, speed wise. The kid started pushing his own chair.

These people are heros, no doubt. Not that they would want anyobody to call them that. Heros rarely want to be called "heros". That's their nature. They just do it, and don't really care about receiving praise for it. And the list is long. The list of people who have overcome extremely bad fortune to achieve great feats.

The most admirable characteristic of humans is resiliency, the ability to survive and flourish under extremely unfavorable conditions. It is the reason why humans exist, and, if they continue to exist, resiliency will be the reason why.

Human beings violently destroy each other with astonishing, horrifying effectiveness. Their greed does damage to their physical environment, and to their metaphysical souls. But they have emerged on this planet after a long struggle and upward climb from bestiality to sophisticated enlightened being, and the process of advancement continues every day, for all of us, for humanity. 

There will come a time when our descendants will regard us as savages, because they will be so very far advanced beyond us. And this is a good thing. It is something to hope for, a reason to endure, ourselves, as we are, for now.

by Bb

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR THE OTHER ARTICLES IN TODAY'S ISSUE OF THE TRUTHLESS RECONCILER. THANKS!