Hero to Zero

I forgot to take my book with me when I went to the Doctors this morning. I regretted this as my Doctor has a typical collection of magazines. One could be forgiven for thinking that all his clients were either neurotic house wives, small children, high powered business men, or African explorers. In other words, the usual collection of kids books, three year old Womans Days, Business Revue and copies of National Geographic that I think were based on verbal reports brought back to the ark by the dove. No Hot Rod magazines or biographies of Bob Dylan to be seen at all. I settled for a rather old copy of NZ Hiking magazine.. Scary huh ?

Anyway, among the recipes for Scroggin & patterns for knitting your own survival blanket & 50 interesting ways to use old hiking boots, I actually found an interesting editorial. Seems the author had a friend who felt strongly enough about racial prejudice to don greatcoat & crash helmet & take up his wooden shield & stand shoulder to shoulder with the other protesters outside Eden Park during the infamous 1981 Springbok tour. This gave him hero status in the authors eyes for a long time. Quite a few years later they were in a car together & the hero was looking decidedly unhappy. When queried, the hero said he was very unhappy about his daughters current boyfriend. When asked it transpired that he was a nice well mannered well dressed young man with a good job etc., BUT it turns out he was a Maori, & our hero just couldnt bear the thought of him touching his daughter.

The hero thing kinda died about there apparently. But it set me to thinking. How many of us are more than happy to give to an abstract cause often without any thought at all. A collector turns up at our door & we put our hands in our pockets with no thought at all, but let a homeless person or a derelict approach us in the street & we shrink away. Its all about level of commitment I guess. Some folks like Mother Teresa for example , dedicate their entire lives to helping othrs less fortunate. Its very laudable, but never seems enough. We always seem to have too few dedicated people & far too many needing assistance. take the middle east thing at the moment. Israel is doing what it thinks is best to safeguard its citizens. His Bollah is a minority trying to impose its will on the majority. Whoever is right or wrong, innocents are being hurt.

I dont claim to be a hero or a humanitarian. All my love & care seems to get used up helping those that I love, with little left over for strangers. In any case, South Africa has supposedly abolished apartheid & look at the mess the country is in anyway. I wonder how many of the protesters that imposed their will on the majority who only wanted to watch a bloody good game of rugby feel about the futility of their actions now..