Watching humans engaging in violent, cruel and bloody acts
and even butchering each other was a sight of entertainments a few centuries
ago. Violent actions were normal in human life. Arenas and amphitheaters such
as the Coliseum in the Roman Empire were built to make such violence available
to the large blood thirsty crowds that always showed up. Actually it was
considered a type of a sport –Yes, humans killing each other was a sport!
This continued until about the year 390 A.D when a Monk
named Telemachus visited the Roman Empire. As Telemachus was walking in the streets
of Rome he followed a crowd that led him to one of the Arenas where there was a
gladiatorial contest.
The Arena was full to capacity the spectators were eager to
quench their thirst for violence. Some had placed their bets on which gladiator
would win and ready to go home with a jackpot home. The gladiators at the center
of the Arena were welding crude weapons ready to slaughter each other to death.
The bell to start the slaughter went off. No sooner had the gladiators launched
violence against each other than Telemachus squeezed himself through the crowd,
into the arena and stood between the two gladiators and shouted,
“In the name of God, stop! In the name of God Stop! In the name
of God, Stop!”
A few seconds of silence passed as people came to terms to
what the old man was trying to do. Finally, the interruption on the awaited
violence was unbearable, the crowd wanted to see violence! The crowed became
angry and begun throwing stones to the monk. Stones came from all sides of the
arena like heat seeking missiles, Telemachus could not escape and he finally fell
down with a thud as he breathed his last breath. He died.
Years later, Emperor Honorius was informed of this act and
was moved by the action of Telemachus. The Emperor banned this impious
spectacle and it ceased to exist and humanity was saved from the love of
violence and life obtained an added premium on its value. Up to date, maybe due
to what happened on that day, in that Arena, almost all constitutions all over
the world, International Conventions and treaties, statutes and almost all
legal documents have safeguarded the right to life and depriving someone life
is considered a grievous offence with hefty penalty.
In our lives today we have many things that are considered
normal and maybe entertaining. Things like poverty manifesting itself in form
of beggars and street families on the
streets, Sick people lying on the streets trying to appeal to the mercy of the
public to help them pay their medical bills, corruption, injustice,people dying
of hunger and many others are maybe normal in our daily life. We may join the public
on the comfort of the benches around the arena and complain about their nuisance,
maybe cheer the authority for punishing them. Or maybe we may squeeze ourselves
out of the crowd and stand in the middle of the arena and shout. Maybe, in the midst
of;
Poverty we shout; In the name of Justice, stop!
Corruption:
In the name of truth and integrity, stop!
Selfishness
and individualism: in the name of service, stop!
Cowardice and
fear: in the name of courage, stop!
War: in the name
of peace, stop!
When you have shouted these words, maybe people will agree
with you and cheer you up or they may join in to make your voice even loudest.
Your action may inspire a paradigm shift in the mental set up of society and
society will never be the same again due to your actions. Maybe history will remember
you like Telemachus who became saint, St. Telemachus. Or maybe your actions
will go unrecognized but for sure you will have made a curve on the human progress
linage; A curve that will set humans free from the chains of violence, greed,
war, injustice.
Also, when you have shouted these words, your actions may
cause an interruption, it may be considered against the grain and people may
see you as a nuisance and you maybe stoned to death. When your dead life will
move on as usual and your action will be forgotten for ever and ever. Or maybe
someone may whisper it to someone and it will inspire a change at some point
many years after you have gone.
As Abraham Lincoln said that we should “do our duty as we
understand it.” Everyone should take a
stand on what his conscience says is right. And when everyone has done his
share of duty the right duty will always prevail. And since the great doors of
history turn on small hinges we may be the small hinges that will open the
doors of humanity to a brighter future.
You see, the day St. Telemachus stood on the arena he not
only stood to preserve the lives of the two gladiators, but he stood to save
the whole of humanity from love of savagery, terror and violence. The day you
will stand, you may be alone but you will save humanity.
I will end with the quote of Robert F. Kennedy, when he said
“… the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can
do against the enormous array of the world's ills-against misery and ignorance,
injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's greatest movements, of thought
and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the
Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to
the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France.
It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the
thirty-two-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created
equal”
So, today what will you shout: In the name of [insert it],
Stop!!
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