– Confucius
We have no control over the evil outside of us: as long as there are human beings roaming free around the planet, there will be crazy people, angry people, and people who do horrible things for all sorts of unfathomable reasons. The bottom line is that there will always be evil in the universe. I actually doubt that life could continue to exist without it: though we think that a perfectly peaceful, safe world sounds ideal, it may just be that without badness to offset it, goodness would disappear. Certainly without meanness, kindness would stop tasting so sweet; we would no longer yearn for it and celebrate it when we find it. Maybe the first step in wisely working with evil is to accept it and send love toward it. Maybe, if we just focus on being loving and kind ourselves instead of lashing out at everything that upsets or frightens us, we’ll find what we’re all ultimately after anyway: a peaceful, happy inner world despite the darkness and chaos we encounter in the world around us.