Terrorism and the Rubiks Cube

Pick up a Rubik’s cube. Now put on a blindfold. Now solve the puzzle…quickly…quickly…

Now, call the Rubik’s cube terrorism. Now you get some small inkling of how complicated is the current situation in our world.

My eyes well up with tears as I see the pictures and video of the carnage, this time from Belgium…as before from Paris, as from San Bernadeno, California, and from a Russian plane with 224 people, as with multiple deaths at a peace rally in Turkey, and a beach shooting in Tunisia, a mosque bombing….yes a mosque bombing….in Yemen, and as “far” back as a newspaper office in Paris, for some cartoons they drew….and on and on and on we could go back. All the way back to 1983 when 241 United States Marines died in Beirut, Lebanon, and six months before that as 64 Americans died at the bombing of our embassy in Beirut.

We forget how long we have been turning the sides of the Rubik’s cube, and still have not solved the problem. As far back as 1095 A.D?

It is a fearful situation again, as with all those other times, and it’s not over, because we still have not solved the problem. We are still blindfolded.

But the entire point of terrorism is to make you afraid to go about your normal life. Afraid to take your vacations, afraid to go shopping at the mall.

Do we keep closing in our circle of activities and living life until we are closed up in our houses with security cameras all around and guns in hand?

Do we react with anger and death dealing of our own volition?

Perhaps instead a Rubik’s cube, we should be trying to put together the three separate pieces of a puzzle ring. One representing love, one representing compassion and one representing patience.

Then when we get those three pieces locked into a perfect circle which has no beginning and no end, we can perhaps begin to understand each other as human beings, and revenge for past atrocities against each other can stop.

I’m not sure if it’s even possible or not in this world, but I’d give anything to make it so.

So I turn and turn and turn the cube over and over. Then finally I figure out that long ago religion has taken the stickers off the cube and moved them and I will never be able to solve the puzzle. I believe in a creator and a creation, but I’m not sure if God chooses sides.

At that point the cube explodes in my hands…….and I start to think, what can I do to make it better. What influence can my one little pitiful, senior citizen life exert. All I can do is just write an opinion. Maybe go somewhere this weekend with the family, and refuse to be afraid no matter where it’s at.