In Praise of Aggression

Sweetness and light has its place. I like it myself. A field of flowers tickled by a playful breeze, children's laughter dancing across a playground - perhaps a Sunday family dinner, warmth and laughter and love. It's great! There's no doubt about that.

However . . . "however" being the grammatically correct way of starting a sentence with "but" and you just knew there was a "but" coming with this one, didn't you . . . there is a time and place for everything and when we live in a world where millions of the people are still wondering how they are going to eat from day to day, where there is massive injustice and corruption being practiced at every turn, including within our own country, where there are people capable of lying, bullying and killing their way to the top of the heap, sweetness and light ain't gonna cut it - not on that stuff.

The first step to handling anything is to be able to confront it. That is why police officers must function so close to the line of thinking like criminals, why soldiers protecting the warmth and safety of home must be killers. It is a sad reality that sometimes those who walk that line between darkness and light sometimes slip over to the darkness. I once had to cut a cop friend loose because he'd done exactly that and it broke my heart. The fact that this happens, though, is not a reason to label all aggression as bad and waltz off into a la-la land of total sweetness and light where everything is just fine and bright and let's just have a great day every day - oh, happy-happy-joy-joy.

Okay, I'll admit it . . . Deb's had a little too much sweetness and light come her way lately and it's starting to leave an unpleasant after-taste. I understand the concept of the charismatic - the biblical idea that one teaches through one's own actions in life - that if one wishes to bring about peace, one must walk and talk peace, must embody peace, etc and I actually have no quarrel with that. I treasure a few friends who are charismatics and they are amazing. It is a noble roll to take on in one's life and thank God there are people out there doing it. They are precious and they should survive to spread their message of compassion, love and forgiveness and they can and will . . . as long as there are others out there to take on the down and dirty task of protecting their right and ability to do that.

That takes one aggressive mothereffer. This universe abhors imbalance. For every beacon of pure sweetness and light that our world is graced with, it seems we are bound to have another whose life exudes the exact opposite. Hence we have Hitler and Gandhi existing at the same time. There are those who would say if you cut out the actions of common aggression the gentle ways, the compassionate ways of people like Gandhi would prevail against the Hitlers of this world. Well, I'm not so sure about that - it could go either way. A battle is a battle no matter what the tactics used, but are we so certain that Gandhi was not himself aggressive?

The fact is that until lately, those people who would take the gentler, compassionate and loving route to freeing this world of tyranny and suffering were in fact very aggressive people. Love and aggression exist in unison. It is only when they are separated that either causes a problem. As long as we exist in a world of illness, natural disaster, injustice and war that will be so. All the sweetness and light in the world is not going to change the fact that we do, in fact, live in such a world and we need to get over this bloody quest for a life without conflict. Yes, you can live that life, but the world will still be what it is. Know that if you choose to avert your eyes and sooth yourself with platitudes like, "Don't worry, it will all work out for the best" some other person must then take on your share of the aggressive work that goes into making it all work out for the best. That's okay too, those of us who do that and do it willingly are actually comforted by a softer, gentler world to come home to, but don't then welcome us by damning the very aggression that protects that sweetness.

Those of you who choose the beautiful paths of this world, don't slip so far into the sweetness and light that aggression becomes a foul concept to you. If you do you are condemning the very thing that makes your lifestyle possible and those of us who have chosen to walk the darker paths for love of you . . . we're getting bloody tired of being kicked for it.

This essay is dedicated to my son, Naji, who had more than his fill of sweetness and light yesterday and was none too happy about it.