It must be at minimum the responsibility of the privileged few
to act with understanding and compassion.
Ann: Hi Diana, you had something more to say?
Diana: Yes. It makes me smile to see how wary you are of my presence. Don’t worry, Ann, I don’t bite, and I won’t commercialize this channel for my own ends – except of course I expect I am doing so to some extent but only to get a message out to those who suffer some of the horrors that are going on in our supposedly civilized societies.
Peer pressure is a fearsome thing, and yet some sort of norms for societal undertakings need to be preserved. It must be at minimum the responsibility of the privileged to showcase how these norms can best be demonstrated by acting with understanding and compassion, by giving of what they have received so that others can have a chance to live in a way where manners and decency and honor are possible.
For when you have nothing, when you cannot provide even modicum of support to your family, it is not surprising that even some of the best of us can become aggressive in our need to assert our existence. Being invisible is the worst fate assigned to a human being.
Being too visible also has its pitfalls as I can attest. But when you see those in the most severely straightened circumstances rise to heights of graciousness and outreach, surely we who have been assigned privileged and visible roles can do no less.
I ask for my sons and their families to take their direction from these heroes among us: those who suffer, who are deprived, and who still offer a helping hand. These are the people who should be our guides and role models. They will show us how to go on. It is never too late to turn in the right direction.
Ann: Diana, why are you coming here? Your boys will never see this.
Diana: (Smiling.) You don’t know that, Ann. And in any case through your good offices I have put what seem to me to be important thoughts, previously held by me only in the ether, down on paper available to any who might find them helpful.
And (smiling) I come here precisely because you are wary of my presence - a place to lay my head where what I say won’t be used to sell newspapers.
March 10, 2021