The other day I was talking to my friend Tony about a documentary I’ve been watching about Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s “Minister of Propoganda.” The rise to power, the strategizing, even the horrifying murder of his six children in the bunker didn’t grab me most.
What did was an incident from Goebbel’s youth. “When he was a kid, he got something wrong with his foot,” I reported eagerly (as if that explained everything, which it just might). “He became lame and all his little friends deserted him”…
I didn’t even need to elaborate. Having sustained our own wounds of abandonment, rejection, and loneliness (as who has not?), we both knew to think: I wonder if things would have been different, for millions of people later, if just one person had been kinder then…
After awhile, Tony mused, “I wonder why some people transmit their wounds by committing terrible, insane violence. And others grow an olive branch inside them.”
I SPOTTED ON THE SIDEWALK THE OTHER AFTERNOON,
PICKED UP, BRUSHED OFF, AND BROUGHT BACK TO MY ROOM.
IT HAS KEPT ME GOOD COMPANY EVER SINCE.
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