If anyone in the world has seen the terrible side of human nature, it’s me. I’ve seen and personally experienced the worst that humanity can dish out.
No one can deny that evil exists in the world. Evil people are out there doing evil things right now.
I have also seen the good in the world, especially the good in people.
Good people are out there performing heroic and even angelic acts of goodness every day—far more than evil people are performing evil acts.
Life wouldn’t work if evil outweighed good or even if they were equally powerful.
We can all live in our houses, drive our cars, and raise our families because the vast majority of people do the right thing every day.
Raising children is a perfect example of this. The vast majority of parents work extremely hard to do the right thing for their children. Parents do this every day at great sacrifice to themselves.
The human race wouldn’t exist if bad parents balanced good parents in equal numbers. We wouldn’t be able to raise enough children to adulthood to keep our population going.
Parents perform these microscopic, unseen acts of heroism every single day. These parents go unsung by everyone—everyone except their own children.
It only takes the smallest twist of logic and perspective to see these acts of goodness.
Any of us can make a choice at any moment of the day to see how good the world is. All we have to do is open our eyes.
We are also making a choice when we turn a blind eye to these acts of goodness and fill our sight with nothing but evil. No one is making that choice for us.
Let’s take a look at the poem, “Good Bones”, by Maggie Smith, and before you ask, no, this isn’t the same Dame Maggie Smith, the actress of Harry Potter fame.
You can find both the poem and a photo of the poet here.
I will reprint the poem here for any of you who don’t want to follow the link.
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
This poem presents several problems right from the outset, so let’s begin our critique with the very first line.
First of all, we all know that life is short and ends in death. No one in the human race escapes this truth. There is absolutely no reason to keep this truth from our children.
Keeping this from our children, glossing over it, or lying about it would be an extremely manipulative and harmful thing to do to a child.
It would be tantamount to emotional abuse of the worst kind. Any child would be within their rights to despise a parent who did this.
The statement that the world is at least fifty-percent terrible and this is a conservative estimate is also a bald-faced lie.
If you actually believe this, if you’re so depressed that you actually think the world is such a terrible place and people are so terrible, if you actually can’t see all the good happening around you every single day, you better not be telling your children that.
Better yet, don’t have children at all.
It would be morally reprehensible for you to bring children into a world you think is so bad.
If you actually believe your child has a fifty-percent chance of winding up murdered and bagged at the bottom of a lake, then you are the monster for bringing that child into such a world.
It would also be incredibly wrong for a parent to keep from their children the fact that strangers might pose a danger to them.
Every parent is responsible for teaching their children about these dangers and preparing the children to deal with the situation should it arise.
None of this means there aren’t a lot of good people in the world. In fact, the majority of people your child will meet will be fundamentally good people.
Sure, they will be flawed people, but we’re all flawed. That doesn’t make a person evil.
It is also our responsibility as parents to teach our children to accept the good people that they do meet, to give people a chance to prove themselves, and to develop trust in the right people.
That won’t happen if a child goes out into the world armored against everyone and thinking the world is a terrible place.
The last part of the poem encapsulates the poet’s message. She’s trying to sell her children on a world she doesn’t think exists. She believes the world is a shithole.
Seriously, if you really believe that, you shouldn’t be here at all. Show some gratitude for all the blessings in your life.
Teach your children to be grateful for the blessings and goodness surrounding you.
Teach them to appreciate the actions of so many good people that come together to create the comfortable life we all enjoy.
The poet is advocating outright lying to our children. The world she’s selling them—the world she doesn’t think exists—is the good world, the beautiful world, the world where people care about each other, help each other, and love each other.
This world exists right outside your window. In fact, it probably exists right inside your home right now. It exists all around you and even in you.
This world only exists because all of us contribute to it and work for it. We are the ones who make it that way with all our love, care, and effort.
This poem is a picture of depression. It’s a picture of someone so nihilistic, hopeless, and buried in negative thinking that they’re incapable of seeing the beauty and goodness around them.
This is a picture of someone so narcissistically self-absorbed that they aren’t capable of seeing the horrific repercussions their own negative attitude can have on those around them.
This is a picture of someone so mentally sick and lacking in real-world perspective that they think it’s okay to pass this negative attitude on to others.
Ironically, the person who first shared this poem with me did think the poem was written by Dame Maggie Smith, the actress. That apparently gave the poem some credibility in this person’s mind.
The person also suffers from severe, life-long depression. She shared me this poem because she resonated with it and presumably thought I would relate to it, too.
If I had to tell my children one thing, it would be this. This poem is a lesson in how not to live your life. Take all the advice and worldview of this poem and do exactly the opposite.
See the world as good and people as inherently good. Embrace all the beauty and goodness life has to offer. Fill your mind and your sight with nothing else.
Do this and watch the evil of the world shrink away to a tiny pinprick on the horizon.
That is how you build a happy, productive, good life that you and your children can look back on with pride.
I hope this helps someone. God bless you all.
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All content on the Crimes Against Fiction Blog is © Theo Mann. You are free to distribute and repost this work on condition that you credit the original author.