Monday Musings...

Sun Tzu once said: "Know your enemy...and know yourself". That six-word statement contains so many aspects to the human condition, that those of us familiar with his writings can go back time and again, and come away with something new from it. But how many of us actually know WHO (or what) our "enemy" might be?
Evil abounds...that is one of those universal truths. And the many faces OF that evil compels us to take action. Whether it shows itself as a radical Islamist bent on wanton destruction, or the schoolyard bully (and everyone in between), evil is here...now, and must be dealt with.

Having worked in the security sector in years past, as well as the Treasury Department, I embraced Sun Tzu's statement when it came to dealing with theft of any kind. You have to think LIKE a criminal in order to understand the criminal. There's just NO other way around it. Put yourself in THEIR shoes for a time, and you get to understand the mindset. The scary part about that is you get to know how to commit crime yourself by thinking in that manner. The difference is that you become aware of the consequences and the punishment for acting upon those thoughts, and therefore refrain from committing an act that would be, shall we say...life altering.

Yet in our frenetic pace with which we conduct our lives, do we really know WHO our "enemy" is, aside from the obvious? Sure we see THOSE evildoers on Television or read about them in the paper, but they are the EASY ones to spot. And in many cases, they SEEK the limelight to further their "cause", whatever they believe that to be. Many times we can even become our OWN worst enemy.
There may be those of us that know how to kill someone twenty different ways, but we just say, "Today...I won't kill". Or we might know how to bypass a security system to rob a business, but we refrain saying, "Today...I won't steal". It becomes an act of self-control and accountability, and like anything else in life, the more we practice it, the better we become at doing it (or NOT doing it, as the case may be).

Now...when we think child predators, do we automatically wonder about the priest at the local parish...or the camp counselor...or even the school teacher educating our kids? We'd like to believe that we don't have to become so paranoid that we cocoon our children within the confines of our houses, making them little more than a generation of isolationists and xenophobes. We want to give people the benefit of the doubt. And we increasingly rely on others to make sure our kids are safe from harm.

We can also wonder about our neighbors; whether or not they're the scrapper burglarizing the area for copper tubing, or perhaps they're part of the drug dealing cartel we've seen frequenting the neighborhood. We know they use drugs, but are they dealing as well?

We can ponder whether or not the children themselves are falling victim to gang and peer pressure, caving into lifestyles that can only lead to the ruining of their young lives. Our kids' friends and acquaintances also become suspect in this case. We worry about them falling in with the "wrong" crowd almost constantly. We always hope our sons and daughters will make GOOD decisions, and that as parents, educators or mentors, have taught them what they need to know to make such things possible for them.

The best we can do as parents OR citizens is to know our enemy. And learning to "know ourselves" is placing our best foot forward in that regard. If we begin to realize what "we" can be capable of doing (to one another), we have a better idea on how to spot trouble before it comes knocking on our doors.
Awareness, vigilance, knowledge, and wisdom are our greatest weapons against any form of enemy. Armed with these four values, we can surmount any obstacle, but we have to temper them accordingly, lest we fall victim to our own devices, becoming what we are trying to eradicate, or as George Lucas' character Obi-Wan Kenobi would say: "Succumbing to the DARK SIDE of the Force". And as Joseph Campbell would remind us in HIS writings: "All mythology has some basis in truth".
We don't have to become overly-cautious, OCD-ridden, Ritalin-swallowing basket cases in the process.
We just need to pay more attention. The old saying "Take time to stop and smell the roses" has meaning here. If we can see and acknowledge the lesser things in life, we learn so much more about the greater things...it's the old "cause and effect" thing at work.

So get to know yourself...after all, you spend more time with YOU than anyone else.