Keep your friends close, they say, your enemies closer. Perhaps, but over time hatred forms a moral paralysis. It becomes a hot coal burning only the one who insists on carrying it around.
We have so much invested in hating those who have hurt or brutalized us. We remember the injury as if it were yesterday. We still taste the blood in our mouth. We can’t let go. We won’t.
Until something within our soul realizes that the hatred serves no useful purpose anymore. Until we wonder if the only purpose it ever really served was to channel away the raw energy of our pain. And now we find time has done that for us, while we weren’t looking.
George hated this old woman, hated her damnable father for destroying this town, hated everyone who carried the her family name. Hated her his whole, pathetic life. Lived for the day her name no longer remained a mark on this sad little town. But now he knew, this time she was the victim. She was the one about to be destroyed by a callous, twenty-first century robber-baron, in the name of progress and profit.
George Milligan was all that stood in the way.
Richard Authier Lee 