Youth believes in forever and happy endings.
The harshness of age is in its wisdom, the bitter pill of learning that as much as our younger selves still cling to hope and miracles, the truth is some people can’t be fixed.
Getting older doesn’t make us less tolerant. It makes us sadly less naive.
After 60 years of looking for excuses I’ve decided that very bad, destructive people need to be put away for life. I can’t care anymore about their personal problems. I’m sorry for them but we just can’t afford to give some people a second chance.
Arsonists are like murderers. They should either be executed or locked up forever. They blew their shot at happiness, decency and contribution.
Some of them never had a chance, of course. Some grew up in families so screwed up they never had a shot at personal salvation. These poor souls suffer more internal pain every week than most of us will deal with in our entire lives.
That’s tragic in every sense of the word but here’s what’s worse:
We just can’t afford to care.
Some of them must be sacrificed because our abilities are limited and we must make decisions.
That’s the ugly truth.
Food for thought from you. – as always.
I understand and agree with what you are saying, though I think you should add rapists along with murderers and arsonists.
But naiveté does not end with age. I know some pretty old folks that are extremely naïve, and I think it goes with the “stubbornness” that many old folk develop. Unwilling to look at new ideas, and developments is at the heart of it. Sort of “If it was good enough then, than it’s good enough now.”