of idealism and broken science

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”     ~Anne Frank~

They always told us that men shall be men. That it’s okay for them to be philandering pigs, because that’s just who they are, you know, a leopard cannot change its spots. If you bring a cow to water then it has no choice but to drink. And a bunch of other wise sayings I consider to be broken science. No, I don’t really mean to say broken science.

It’s my fault, I guess. I have been too sheltered, and have been taught that I am responsible for my own actions. I’ve made many mistakes, maybe even more than I made as a child. Sure, you try to pass them off as “It just happened, I don’t know what got over me.” But that’s really not true, is it?

You DO know why it just happened, you DO know exactly what got over you. That moment you decided that you’ll deal with the backlash later, now. Now you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. So you did. And the consequences came. You couldn’t have known the price tag attached.

Like going to the supermarket and opening a bottle of mineral water to drink, assuming it was the usual 50 bob. Only to get to the counter and it is say 5,000. I know, a stretch, just go with it okay? Your entire present fortune cannot add up to 5,000 bob, but you already drank the water. Let's imagine it's because you walked from the other side of town to Nakumatt Mega on a hot afternoon, because in your view it was ‘just here’ (this actually happened).

So you’re stuck at the till. You have to pay somehow. But that’s the kind of situation that resembles the quality of being a lady hound. No, I don’t really mean to say lady hound. But you drank the water, they’ve gotta exact their pound of flesh. Sorry.

My problem is that I’m too idealistic. It’s weird because that idealism is tempered by a significant level of general cynicism. Essentially that means I expect to be let down, but up until the actual let-down, I somehow imagine I can’t possibly be let down. Please tell me this is normal. Ish.

So I refuse to accept that men shall be men. I refuse to take the Pharisees who brought the woman to Jesus’ feet, caught in the act, alone? So it’s okay for him but not her. So she bears the curse and ridicule while everyone understands that yes, ‘men shall be men’. Broken science. In a huge pile.

And believe me, I hold all those mantras with the same disdain I hold the positions of Woman county representatives, affirmative action and those feminists fighting for special treatment because they are women. Yeah. Hold your own, pull your weight. Carry the cross for your own shortcomings. Don’t pass them off to your gender. If you didn’t get elected because you’re a woman, too bad your people are MCPs. There’s no constitutional crisis. The 30% threshold applied to appointed posts, not elective.

Enough politics. Being that there are only two people on earth who know the truth, I refuse to be caught in the middle, and get lost amid the ‘I think’ and ‘It must be true’. I suppose the better part of being me is that I’m able to open a clean new book and work with stuff as they are, and pretend that the past doesn’t exist. Sure, I’ll remember the past, but interestingly, it will be like a far off memory, rather than a shocking pain. 

Maybe I just haven’t been properly hurt yet. Well, I'm young still. I’ll always you the benefit of doubt. I’ll always believe in the goodness of mankind. Maybe it’s faith. Maybe it’s gross naiveté. Whatever, even if Anne Frank died, it’s not what killed her. Ergo, I too, will live.

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”                                                              ~Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl~