I am what I am...

I've had to spend a lot of time over the past week justifying what I did and who I am. I begin the story most of the time as: "I made a big mistake..." I explain that I was stupid for agreeing to give a stranger a ride in my car and I say that act was where it all went wrong. I tell people that I screwed up and I learned from my mistake. Maybe all this is true, but that sucks.

What did I do wrong? I was at a stoplight, and a fellow human being asked me for a ride. I had a ride and he didn't. It wouldn't have cost me anything to give him and his friend a ride down the street. I offered a simple act of charity.

What's wrong is that we consider that a wrong act. What the hell? If everyone did what I did in that situation, do you really thing that there would be as many car-jackings and other acts of violence as there are in this world? Of course not, it wouldn't be accepted because it wouldn't be expected. FUCK believing what I did was wrong.

Don't take me incorrectly. I blame the two guys that took my car at gunpoint 100%. They are disturbed and ill educated. They are pitiful, poor excuses for humans, and I'm putting my feelings lightly in saying that.

But I hope I have the courage to make a mistake like that again. My days of giving strangers a ride are over. My days of trusting the human race are not. You, reading this right now, are a good person. The person not reading this is a good person. Trust your fellow human, and you will not be let down. Condemn your neighbor, and he (ge - if you want to use the gender-non-specific term that Fig and I devised) will rob you. When will we learn, you cannot beat peace out of ignorance. You cannot strangle justice out of uneducated actions. You cannot scare victims into obedience.

I'm sad, because this experience has made me question my beliefs in the human race. But I will not let my convictions be compromised by the novelties of my own experiences. People are good; people are kind. Some people get misguided and do wrong to others, but that should not scare and prevent the rest of us from being who we really are.