Carl Sandburg

Choose
By CARL SANDBURG

The single fist and ready,
Or the open hand held out waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

I am an American so November means a month of in which Thanksgiving Day appears, but I am not always full of gratitude. Sometimes I am angry. The last election in the United States shows that I am not the only person angry at the way things are right now. I suspect there will be many angry people carving the Thanksgiving Day turkey if they are lucky enough to have one.

The other day I was looking at some old journals that I kept when I worked at the welfare office in a Midwestern city years ago. I thought it was cute that I put a sign up on my desk that read, "It's hard to soar like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys." Good heavens, what a hostile thing to put on my desk. There was a lot of hostility on that job site and I certainly did not improve matters.

My fist has been closed for most of my life and I have been in denial of it. I choose that way and wondered why people reacted to me in anger. Golly gee. As Mark Twain said: "Denial is not a river in Egypt." I was in denial for most of my life. People have been shrinking back from me and my anger for some time and I have been getting more angrier as they did. I reasoned they had no reason to. Yeah,right.

I have been going to church of late. I am not a Christian but they speak English and I am in a country that I have few people I can talk to. There is no danger that I will convert, but I have been listening to the message of the Bible. One of them is that God is love and that if you know God you must know love. As a Buddhist, I thought I felt my faith was superior to theirs. I was wrong. Love is important to both religions. I have been dealing too long with the closed fist. Its time I opened my hand and choose for Sandburg was right. We meet by one or the other. I am tired of being angry.

Thank you, Mr. Sandburg.