Lessons from Oskar Schindler
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Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party who spent his own considerable fortune saving a group of Jews from certain death at the hands of those working the Nazi concentration camps.
Afterward, having fled as a criminal his works during the war were chronicled and he was declared "Righteous Among the Nations" for saving some 1200 doomed people who otherwise would have certainly been murdered.
He lies in repose upon Mount Zion and holds the distinction of being the only member of the Nazi party to be interred there.
When I think of all he did and all that which I have done I am left feeling ashamed for my occasional utter lack of humanity. Unfortunately, having gotten my attitudes and predilections honestly as the results of how and where I was educated I fear that this remains all I know and therefore ... remains part of me.
It is what it is and I am what I am. In that clarity of retrospect I am afforded a fleeting glimpse at what I've done right and what I've done wrong and where I went wrong and why.
Few gain those insights of self awareness I've come to know in my travels upon the Earth. I think it's a function of advancing age and witness of the characteristics of those succeeding generations in my midst. My only issue remains my resistance to forgiveness on several fronts. It seems I neither want any nor find myself inclined to give it freely as I should.
That unworthy streak with which I contend is at once an honest attempt to be who I am — yet still I contemporaneously counter those forces which would drag me into the pit with each and every breath.