I Wonder Sometimes

  Sometimes I wonder... things.  If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, how many doctors a day does it take to keep an apple away?  why do pizza and cheeseburgers taste so good while celery and watercress taste so... little?  Why does evil have to exist?  It is easy to say evil exists and leave it there.  Also, one man's evil may be another man's virtue.  To some extent right and wrong are relative, sure.  It is wrong to kill in cold blood, but okay in self-defence.  It is right to save money, but okay to give aggressively to the poor.  I'm, however, definitely of the school that evil stands alone objectively as a bad, regrettable, avoidable force.  Evil is accepted by its purveyor.  The individual understood at some level that it is wrong, it's just that the alternative - to ignore the evil which compels them - is less desirable to them at the moment.

  I refer, for example, to the horrific murders committed in the name of God.  Yesterday "Muslim" terrorists decided their vision of God required them to randomly end a dozen lives in Paris.  The same day, I my town, a purely evil man mindlessly gunned-down a promising young woman whom he was robbing and whose car he was stealing after she left a pub.  Her crime was to run - albeit not fast enough - for her life.   I cannot get from my head the vision of the crazed Abubakar Shekau on video after he kidnapped 200+ Nigerian school girls.  He was so smug, so very proud in his insane defiance.
  I really wish these people did not exist in my world, or in your world for that matter.  But they do.  They have always been around and look to always be around.  I cannot snap my fingers and make them vanish, as nice as that would be.  Did I allow them to be evil - in any way participate in the process?  Probably not.  At maximum warp, I couldn't visit each unfortunate child who is taught to be an evil adult and abort the process.  Moreover, any intervention might be impossible - the person in question might just be... evil.
  So, what an I to do about evil?  Cross myself and then God it did not occur to me or mine?  Should I remark how very despicable it is on social-media and wring my hands together passionately?  Maybe wait a little while and forget about the entire episode entirely?  Maybe I should take it upon myself and act like Jack Ruby, the man who assassinated Lee Oswald after Oswald assassinated John Kennedy.  But none of those courses seem right - morally defensible.  I can always try to do two very critical things when evil thrusts itself upon my awareness.  My first act is to never forget the innocents, never allow their suffering to go un-marked by memory and personal remorse.  Second, I must make myself remember the evil which befell them and cling to this motivation to act with kindness to all those I can.  Does kindness expel the darkness of evil?  No, nothing can.  Does kindness - heartfelt, personal, random kindness if need be - wash away the evil?  No, nothing can.  So what is the good of kindness?  Two things.  One, it is with each application a minuscule counter balance to evil on the scales of humanity.  Second, and more importantly, it is all we who are not blind can do.
  Please go out of your way to be kind.  Fight back!