"Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer--and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are at siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another." --- Hilaire Belloc


On almost every level I think that that the majority of our world's problems today are related to a failure to look at the world in the way that Belloc and others do. We push each other away for fear of them offending us and in so doing create the greatest offense of all--a schismatic fractured world. This is not to decry injustices or those who decry injustices, but if one's plaintive call is only a negative statement, the sin that started the protestation will result in an even uglier reality, of separation. When unity is lost, a vacuum is created, and when that vacuum is filled through the natural laws of mass action (yes, they apply to spiritual truths), what comes in is worse than what went out in the first place. Of course, my use of the word protestation has certain ecclesiological implications that are conjured, but they are not on my mind at the moment. What is on my mind are the myriads of families who are flying into this vacuum like a science fiction movie when the door to the spacecraft is accidentally opened. This horror movie scene is replayed in home after home, as divorce physically rends united souls, and even without divorce so many exist in compartmentalized existence. And the results of this are even more grotesque than any suffocation and explosion (or yes, even the cooler concept of an implosion).


I don't want to sound Hegelian, but we really do need more synthesis in our life. Antithesis should start off a discussion over a disagreement, but mere antithesis is probably the worst thing in the world, for it is ultimately unrealistic.

As the Belloc quote implores, so do I say, let us suffer absurdities. For if we do not, we are the most absurd ones of all.