Love is natural, but it's hate that's learned

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

While delegates from 57 Muslim nations sit around in Malaysia trying to come up with a definition of terrorism - using human beings as bombs to blow apart civilians is, most of them say, mere freedom fighting - the truth, as usual, gets buried under words.

The truth is simple. Life is precious. Life is a gift. Life should be safeguarded, not sacrificed. So why isn't the preservation of human life the subject of the day instead of the ongoing rationalization for yet more murder?

What is so wrong with the human race that after thousands of years we still haven't learned that life does not have to be like this? We have choices, but the ones we keep making are so obviously wrong. Where has all the hate and fighting led, except to more hate and fighting? We are not born this way. We learn it.

I watch two brothers play basketball as I walk past their house. One's about 12, the other 8 or 9. The older boy sinks his shots more often than not. Until recently, the younger one missed most of his. But he's been catching up, his afternoons of practice paying off.

In the summer they play for hours, until the dark forces them indoors. In the winter, they play after school. I hear them before I see them, the sound of the ball on the pavement mixed in with their happy sounds. In a few years, will these boys be dressed in combat gear and fighting a war? Will they be the victims of a toxin or a nuclear attack? Will they be killed while eating in a restaurant by a disenfranchised someone who has been made to believe that murder by suicide is martyrdom? Is their mother raising them simply to have them die?

Children their age are dying every day in fights for boundaries and power and ideology here and all over the globe. Is there no end to this? It seems we have come to a point where peace isn't negotiable because it is no longer imaginable.

Here it is spring and tulip bulbs that last fall seemed lifeless are bursting through the soil. Help me create, God says. And we do. It takes a long time to grow a garden. It takes longer to grow a child. Why do we bother when the world's leaders can sit around a table and talk "our people" and "your people" unable to find a patch of common ground where people are just people?

There are cruises now to Vietnam. Saigon is the newest hot spot. My husband and I just returned from Japan. While we were there, a museum opened, dedicated to the memory of the 100,000 Japanese killed by U.S. warplanes in the Battle of Tokyo. News of the museum was a footnote in the paper. Why? Because no one cares anymore. Japan and the United States are friends.

So why can't we be friends with our enemies now instead of later? Why can't we bypass all the deaths and say, stop? Put down the guns. Look at each other and look at each other's children. And stop the carnage now. Yet even after the decimation of Tokyo, the Japanese wouldn't quit. Ego and pride displaced good sense.

On the news Monday night there was a story about three puppies rescued from a hole in Florida. Firefighters slipped a rope around each puppy, and one by one pulled them out. While the mother dog cleaned and nuzzled her puppies, the firefighters patted each other on the back and smiled.

Human beings are as able to love as they are to hate. Far more able. The love comes naturally. It's the hate that has to be learned.