The Thing about Villains

It's strange how our minds can twist themselves around to change how they feel about the 'good and evil' in life. Morality is fickle. Over time I have the ability to go from thinking an issue is completely black and white to letting circumstances sway my stance.

In the past year, I have watched two separate TV shows with a killer antagonist. No pun intended.....yet. Both shows portray a main character who is also the "bad guy." One character is a politician who betrays everyone around him to gain power. The other is a gangster whose family controls an entire city through cutthroat bribery. Both characters are murderers. Both characters demean women. Both characters stomp all over innocent bystanders. As I watched both shows, I began to realize something. I liked  these characters.

In the midst of me mentally shaming them, I was rooting for their success. Each week I would watch these shows and make excuses for the character's behavior. Most of my excuses were made because I knew the person behind the action. Their reasoning had been explained through thoughtful script writing throughout each episode. They were no longer just evil men doing evil things.

The writers of the shows had allowed me to cozy up next to their bad guy and see the mind behind the madness. 

Empathy crept up in me as one of the characters forces a former prostitute back into her old ways to save his family's gambling business. Understanding pervaded my opinion of the other character as he commits adultery to uphold his wife's desire for political control. These two men will stop at nothing to gain their selfish and psychotic dreams, yet I find myself wanting them to be the victor. Wanting them to stay alive and make it to the next season. What does this say about me? 

When I allow my mind to convince me that I know the villain, I emasculate the evil in which their character possesses. When I know the heart behind the villain, I want to make excuses for their actions in an attempt to convince myself they aren't bad. They aren't all bad. They're just like me. And in many ways, they are. The evil of my heart isn't satisfied just dwelling inside me. It wants to own me. My inner grand jury thinks it can judge a soul by it's humanness instead of it's depravity. It thinks we're all naturally good. This is how I know I'm messed up inside. When I see evil and justify it.

And That Morning

You're waiting to be seated in a restaurant with an old friend from out of town. One of those friends you can just sit with and talk about the mundane things. Brunch conversation 101. "The last time I came to this place I was with so-and-so." Girls and untainted memories. We just can't let them go sometimes. The conversation changes and soon you're talking about something else. You look up from your phone and the blood seems to rush into your chest; heavy and cold. There he is. With her. Walking out of the restaurant. You make eye contact and quickly look down again at your phone as if nothing happened. Of course this would happen to me. Out of all the restaurants in a city of 1.2 million people.....

As soon as they are out of ear shot, I slow my breath and say, "That was so-and so that just walked out." My friend arches her neck around and stares out the restaurant window. She jokes about going and talking to him. Telling him what she thinks of him. "Are you ok?" she asks. 

You plan for these kinds of moments. Moments that involve perfectly phrased obscenities and cause broken engagements. I had mentally written the script of what I would say if I ever saw him again. In the center of my selfish existence I fantasized about a moment in which I was the victor wearing a crown studded with my own pride. A moment in which I was finally justified. But when the moment finally came, an eye twitch was all he got. The motivation was gone.

While I was sleeping, time was healing all the hatred I had bottled up. Time was changing my mind about what it means to be 'victorious' over wrongfulness. It just didn't seem important anymore. So when my friend asked, "Are you ok?" I laughed. 

I laughed. I couldn't believe the odds that I would see him just after remembering I had been to this same restaurant with him. I laughed because I no longer wanted to put him in his place or embarrass him in front of strangers. I laughed because I was happier sitting with a friend from my childhood and talking about the silliest of things that old friends talk about. I laughed because finally, I could.

"For everything there is a season...a time to cry and a time to laugh."

The Beauty of Life

I'm taking off my make-up in the most usual nightly way. I lean in closer to remove a speck of mascara on my lower eyelashes when I stop and look at my reflection. Then I see it.

Myself.

I watch my eyes looking back at me, taking in every aspect of my present reality. Moving as I subconsciously tell them to. Back and forth. Slowly. Quick. Always guiding with unmatched precision. They never mess up. There's never a system glitch with these guys.

I stop and see myself as if it were the first time. A thing of beauty. Not because I fit the mold for a culture's standard of aesthetic appeal, but because I can't help but stop and look at the complexity of the creature I find myself to be.

____________________________________

I'm in fourth grade and my mom is having a baby. She shows us pictures of what my little brother looks like inside her. She thinks the whole thing is ah-mazing. My lack of zeal in having another brother is even more subsided when I see that an extraterrestrial is living inside my mother's abdomen. Protruding forehead. Tiny limbs. Beady eyes.

I'm studying for a test a few weeks ago when I stop to look at a photo titled, "Period of the Embryo: seventh week." A slightly crystalline skin surrounds the two small black spheres that will later look identical to my own. The lucid beauty of life growing in front of me makes me hold my breath. How does it happen?

I see what my mom tried to show me all those years ago.

There is unmatched beauty in the living. When I forget to bask in the beauty of life, I forget who I am. When I forget to feel awe that I can intake everything around me through two spheres that once resembled black eyed peas, I can't glorify the One who made them.

We have become accustomed to miracles. We are so accustomed to seeing ice freeze and seeds grow and eyes blink and babies laugh. We forget it's all miracle. It really is great to be alive, when you think about it.

                         .... What a wonder it all is.