While looking east you see a crater filled with lava. You should be very grateful that you are not in the lava. If you only look toward the east, you might truly believe that your situation is the best that there can be.
All the while, west of you, is a green meadow filled with Twinkies and butterflies (or your pleasures of choice).
If you are surrounded by a chorus of voices telling you that your fire ant bed is the best place there is, and that you are utopian or stupid for thinking that there might be a better life, you may believe it.
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Unless things are perfect, there are always improvements that can be made. It doesn't diminish the good that you already have in any way. Don't "Love it or leave it", but "Love it and keep working to improve it".
(Originally posted here.)
Chesterton was right on: "'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"
ReplyDeleteCriticizing nationalist Rudyard Kipling, he said, "He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reason. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English."