Friday, December 15, 2006

Decency: The Reason for Our Struggle



I FEEL THAT the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred.

People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. They want to be told about this publicly. . . .

Goodwill longs to be recognized and cultivated. For it to develop and have an impact it must hear that the world does not ridicule it. . . .

I never try to give people practical advice about how to deal with the evil around them, nor could I even if I wanted to -- and yet people want to hear that decency and courage make sense, that something must be risked in the struggle against dirty tricks.

They want to know that they are not alone, forgotten, written off.

Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, from his book Summer Meditations

[Content for this post "lifted" from Heron Dance's "A Pause for Beauty" #164--www.HeronDance.org.]

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