Sometimes it really scares me, just thinking about how much easier it is to destroy than to create.  I don't mean that in like an abstract "Wow, the world is just heading towards evil, look at how power leads to corruption and how difficult it is to fight for the right thing when so much is against you", but rather, the same sort of fear that you might feel if you were standing near the edge of a cliff.  Rationally, there is no reason you'd ever step off the edge, yet being confronted with how easy it would be to throw yourself off, is unsettling.

In the same way, I look at things other than myself sometimes and am deeply unsettled by the power we have to destroy.  We can take lives, both ours and others.  We can destroy what took years to build.  We can erase history.  We can say words that can never be taken back.  Even though you know that rationally, you won't willingly do any of these things, or at least you'll try your hardest not to, it's still unnerving to see so clearly that possibility.

That fear, I think, feels more paralyzing than a fear of death, which somehow is a little more abstract.  The fact that within my body I have the power to do so much harm not to myself, but to others.  And it's a very real fear too, because we have all had experiences where we have, knowingly or unknowingly, done just that.  Perhaps we did not take the life of another, but we have caused anger and grief.  We have made mistakes, or caused accidents.  Maybe it is not really something that can be taken lightly.

And yet, despite all of the harm that we have done, and all of the mistakes that we will continue to make, we must continue to hold hope, for without that there is no way forward.  Living life paralyzed by the fear of mistakes is the "easy" way out, but it does no one any good at all.  And so we continue to struggle, to do our best, and to be afraid of everything going wrong.  But to still walk forward in spite of it.

Sometimes we may stumble, and some days we may stop altogether.  But we still carry forward our hope.  If not for ourselves, then for each other.