The Choice
“Choose life, that you might live”
Implies that death can be chosen
Some choose a kind of living death:
A malevolence born of bitterness, hate and self destruction.
Grief drove him there deeper, true;
But the choice was made in the heart of a boy
And today his old man heart still beats despite his best injections…
His best plans to self destruct
He’s on borrowed time
And he knows it
Or does he? With his mind twisted and decaying, who knows what he knows…
While his heart still beats
And his lungs stubbornly persist
The choice is remains
Life, to let go of the bitterness
The door is open:
To live.
‘Hand Of Malevolence/ Door Of Hope’ 2024 original illustration.
I wrote the above words about someone I know in the personal realm and I wanted to express the heaviness in my heart for that person.
The artwork, I thought, went along well with it. The idea for the artwork originally came from a conversation in my professional life…someone said a phrase like “malevolence has followed me around” and it sparked the idea to draw this image.
The Merriman-Webster dictionary includes synonyms for malevolence like “hatefulness” “resentment” “vitriol” “ill-will” “contempt” “bitterness” “malice”
I wanted to draw this hand of malevolence as clearly as I could to distinguish it from the door way containing light and hope (even the tree is growing leaves on the side bent towards the light). There is a stark difference between the light and the dark. When we pretend otherwise or water down the differences (for example, we teach that everything is relative/ subjective and there are no obvious metrics for good or evil), we do a disservice to those who have been touched by the hand of malevolence or those trapped in its claws. We effectively deny the destructive consequences of malevolence. We don’t allow the doorway of hope and healing to be opened to them.
The antonyms/opposites of malevolence include: “kindness” “goodwill” “love” “understanding” “beneficence (the quality or state of doing or producing good)”
The question I am wrestling with today is this: how do WE handle it when someone we love has chosen to consistently hang around with bitterness…self-destruction..hatefulness? When they have seen the hand of malevolence beckon and surrendered themselves to it..through a pain, a wound, a hurt, or unhealed ‘life stuff’
What next, when we see the doorway, we see the alternatives, we desperately wish for them to be touched by the warmth of those rays of light….but we are powerless to change the course they are on?
That is a question I don’t really have an answer for. The closest I can come up with is that we must continue being involved in the light- the kindness, understanding, willing the good for them, never giving up hope for them… perhaps those rays of light might reach further than we can see…
Some words I have found encouraging (and artistically useful and inspiring) in the face of hearing and seeing darkness in my personal and professional worlds:
John 3:19-21
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
John 8:12
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
John 1:4-5
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.