Writer
But I won’t celebrate.
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” — MLK, Jr.
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This post has been updated since its original appearance.
I live 20 miles from work, 40 miles from school and more than 40 miles from any good beach.
So I do a lot of driving. And for years, I’ve driven the same car: the Spence Mobile if you knew me high school, the Motha Ship, if you knew me in college.
I used to think there is something about the deep cranberry pearl color of my car that made it difficult for other drivers to see. Why else, I thought, would drivers try to change lanes while my car’s in the way, or not stop when my car is clearly not moving at all in front of them?
I’ve learned, however, that it isn’t the color of my car that causes the near misses and the fender benders. It’s the way we (Americans, maybe humans) drive (as well as live). And since honking the horn and flailing my arms around about it at other drivers doesn’t really work, I wrote this column:
Distracted driving puts all of us at risk on U.S. 19 and beyond
Online now, in print Sunday, May 1, 2011. I hope you enjoy it.
From behind the podium on a small stage in Fox Hall at Eckerd College, David Kaczynski spoke on Monday night. He is executive director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. He is also the Unabomber’s brother. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak, take it.
Part of his talk is about his opposition to the death penalty (and as somebody who is also opposed to it, that’s the reason I went to see him). But in the other part, he talks a lot about his brother.
Be warned: there’s no way what I write will do it justice.
But when Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, was arrested, I was 10. All I remember is the police artist’s sketch of the suspect and the footage of Ted’s arrest. Back then, I didn’t know how many bombings there were. I didn’t know he had been hunted since 1978. I didn’t know how many people his bombs had killed and injured. I only knew a “monster” had been caught.
David only knew a brother. So when his wife brought it up — “Please don’t be angry with me for saying this,” she said. “But do you think your brother might be the Unabomber?” — it seemed unfathomable. But the couple put two and two together. With their hunch, David and his wife approached the FBI.
The guy whose bombs killed three and injured more than 20 is the kid who grew up without friends. He’s the genius who finished high school at 15 and went right to Harvard. He is the big brother who created a low handle on the screen door so three-year-old David, otherwise too short to work the door, could get into the house from the backyard.
While they were kids, David asked his parents why his brother had no friends. Why his brother was different. Everyone’s different, they told him. And no matter what, his mom added, “Never abandon your brother.”
You can tell when you hear David speak that he hasn’t.
He gives reasons for his opposition to the death penalty: The fallibility of the people who pick who gets executed means innocent people get executed. The disparity in who gets the death penalty (It’s not the worst of the worst criminals; it’s the people with the worst legal representation, he said.). The extraordinary cost. The fact that a lot of people on death row have been diagnosed with severe mental illnesses (mental illnesses that were present at the time of the crime) — people who need help and don’t get it on death row.
He explains the reality of his brother’s mental illness (schizophrenia). The shock and trauma of suspecting and finding out the Unabomber is his brother.
He restores the humanity that has been robbed of a man, not a monster, named Ted.
I found it all deeply moving.
Today I came across an e-book, and a set of videos that accompany it, by a guy named Andy Stanley. It’s called Your Move: 4 Questions to Ask When You Don’t Know What To Do.
Who hasn’t been there?
I can’t say it better than Stanley, so I’ll let him tell you about the study:
And via an excerpt from the book, I’ll also let Stanley share one of the questions he asks — one I think all of us should ask ourselves more often:
“Here’s the first of the four questions:
Am I being completely honest with myself?
We’re all experts at selling ourselves on whatever we really want to do, whether we should do it or not. We’re all very good at deceiving ourselves, because we feel so compelled to justify our unwise decisions. It’s as if our hearts are wrapped around a certain choice, then they send our brains a message that says, “Quick, find me some reasons for it!” Our brains manufacture the reasons, and then we start believing them.
Why aren’t we more honest with ourselves? Because for the most part, we’re on a quest not for truth, but for happiness. Our hearts cling to whatever choices we think will make us happiest, no matter how unwise they might be.
So, we need to ask ourselves, Why am I doing this . . . really? What’s the real reason for the choice I’m making? We don’t often ask ourselves this because it’s convicting and uncomfortable. There are times we don’t really want to know why we’re making a certain choice.”
If you’re interested in the study, it and the videos are available for free download here through April 30, 2011.
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Romans 7:15
Oh, Paul. How I can relate. It stinks to want to do one thing but to choose, for any of a multitude of reasons, to do something else instead. It is a whole other awful thing to know perfectly well what you should do and choose to do anything but it. (Paul’s been there.)
Sometimes, what I do I don’t want to do, have time to do or benefit from doing and what I don’t do is exactly what I should do. Like when I shop like I don’t have a budget. Or when I eat but I’m not hungry. Or when, instead of studying, I pretend my TV remote is a microphone and I perform the Avett Brothers’s Live Volume 3 album in its entirety in front of a mirror.
Afterward, I don’t say, “Wow. I’m glad I chose that. It really worked out for me.”
I say, “I do not understand what I do.”
But I do understand that I have choices. And that — in the words of the Avett Brothers — we only get so many days.
Choose wisely.