No one is good at everything, everyone is good at something.

I keep having to relearn lessons. I am not alone in this, though, am I? It’s just so irritating to realize that I could have avoided any number of things – pain, embarrassment, criminal charges – if I’d remembered a previously learned lesson.

Years ago (decades, actually) I read Markings by Dag Hammarskjold. I still have the book, but there is one bit that I never need to look up:

“’Better than other people.’ Sometimes he says: ‘That, at least, you are.’ But more often: ‘Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not – like other people.’”

That is the actual quote. I seem to have changed it to “either you are everything you can be, or you are not, just like everyone else”. Not that it matters, the point is the same.

It’s a point I seem to have forgotten. It’s a point our country has forgotten when politicians think it is acceptable to say that we’re better than Syria, or Africa or anywhere else. Better to help Syria – or Pakistan, or any number of places, including Canada - be everything it can than tell them everything it isn't.