f@nu fiku: online hard science fantasy manga

Beginning | Previously | Next | Current | Archives * News | Intro | Story | Characters | Forums | Gallery | Production | Links
contact the author at centaur at dresan dot com ~ stay up to date with our Atom Feed
page1

Show A Little Empathy, Would Ya?

sponsored by The Library of Dresan
The Library of Dresan

Show A Little Empathy, Would Ya?

It's all too easy to be self-righteous.
People wound us all the time:
Our friends unintentionally
Our enemies deliberately
The rude lady in the grocery line obliviously
The clerk at the grocery register in his hurry.
It's all too easy to point out how they've done us wrong.

It's a lot harder to be self-reflective.
We wound others all the time:
Our friends unintentionally
Our enemies deliberately
The fellow sufferer in the grocery line ungraciously
The clerk at the grocery register in our haste.
It's all too easy to overlook how we've done them wrong.

But the real challenge is to step outside the self.
It's easy to live in our shoes, and harder to reflect in them,
But while almost everyone talks about it sooner or later,
no-one takes the time to actually walk in someone else's shoes.

When people wound us, we never stop to ask why:
We never consider they have a reason for their behavior
just as we never stop to consider how our own behavior
might be improved by rooting out the reasons that cause our sins.

Only by digging to the roots of our behavior
do we have a chance of stopping the cycle of evil
before it begins again.

-From the inaugural address of Zanne Hathaway, First Presiding Bishop of the Pacifican Episcopal Church