Suffer Fools Gladly
“He had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down. When he road past, I’d seen he was carrying fire, in a horn the way people used to do. I could see the horn from the light inside of it, about the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew–”
It was at that exact moment in the theater, during the final lines of No Country for Old Men that I saw a guy in front of me sigh and circle his arm forward in a “move it along” motion.
Yeah, for a second, I wanted to break it in half. But if I set out to break the arm of every idiot that didn’t get [it], I couldn’t even keep up with the world’s reproduction. (Though the thought of me frantically running from person to person, armbarring them each in turn is pretty awesome.)
There’s a difference between being happy that you get it and being happy that others don’t. There’s a word for that.
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Ian,
Reminds me a lot of one of my favorite quotes from the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
“One day, I remember, a dirty glass of water was on a counter and Mr. Muahammad put a clean glass of water beside it. ‘You want to know how to spread my teachings? Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water. Just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.’
Of all the things that Mr. Muhammad ever was to teach me, I don’t know why, that still stands out in my mind, although I haven’t always practiced it. I love too much to battle. I’m inclined to tell somebody if his glass of water is dirty.”
This exact thought crossed my mind today as a certain somebody drove into an intersection (while talking with their eyes closed) and managed to sit in said intersection while their light turned red successfully blocking rush hour traffic.
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