Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Fragmented flower

One thing that hurts me deep all the time is having to break a promise. For years I've thought it would be easy to keep promises, and that I wasn't trying hard enough to keep them. I always feel destroyed when I have to break one.
People break promises: e.g, the military turns against the civilians. They did in Argentina, they do now in Burma. But one officer flee from the military forces of Burma to not turn against the civilians.
Or like many priests in Argentina, they may turn against people revealing the secret of confession to the military repressors, and lie to the families of the tortured. One has been sentenced hours ago, yesterday October 9th, in one historic resolution in Argentina. In the trial to the chaplain Christian von Wernich (click for the New York Times page on it), he was found guilty of crimes against humanity; after having witnesses menaced and one disappeared (Jorge Julio López), may be dead, months ago. Von Wernich will be for life in jail or house arrest due to his age. This is one of the chaplains and priests, that in the last dictatorship in Argentina helped the military forces to torture, betray, give names, while he walked around torture centers. In the other hand, Reverend Rubén Capitanio, during the trial, condemned the complicity of the argentinian catholic church with the military junta.
(You, who are reading, and you, who are not reading, :-) do not turn against the ones you have to protect, dissent, fight the corrupt power: dissent).
This is a country of broken promises. And I can hardly breathe when I'm forced to break a promise.

6 comments:

Dzeni said...

An excellent post with an excellent point. Perhaps it is better not to make promises. When we were small, it would be rare for my dad to promise everything. Normally he'd say that he would try to do stuff. He almost always managed to succeed, but he pretty much never promised, because promises can be too hard to keep.

runnerfrog said...

Many thanks!
OK, perhaps it is better to not make a promise, they truly are hard to keep; but here may be it is just me who see something out of the common: I've been in many situations which are promises by themselves, or force a person into a promise to be make. Sometimes I feel I'm not the only one in this: it is a very complex issue, which involves morals at a level as hard to face as the promise itself... I feel sometimes there is no way a person can avoid to make a promise, then it has to be kept; whenever one of those has to be broken, the pain is big. I mean sometimes making a promise is not an act based strictly on a decision, but in principles aquired before the situation is faced. I have a complex (or complicated) way to consider the issue. I admit I have silent promises nobody knows about, not even the person to which is made. Weird, ha? This means, of course, the declaration is tacit or null. I think this is called "honour bond" by some people, instead of promise, and that is what I consider the core of the post.

zzz said...

Some promises are ment to be broken, some are ment to be kept, and sometimes, like Dzeni says, it's better not to make any promises at all. Promises are like secrets... very hard to keep for one self.

runnerfrog said...

I use my blog sometimes to take out some half-thought ideas :-) coming from feelings deep inside. I doubt my beliefs in front of everyone and every new thought of another person. This is not the only issue that makes me feel I am immature somehow. Nevertheless, whenever I think of a sentence that might justify the wholeness of my life (although I don't care about what a tombstone might say) I think "He deserved eternal youth" might fit me with justice, or I should behave to make it fit me with justice. And many other persons surely. :-)

Clara said...

I think Dzeni is right...would be better not to make promises. May be this is part of human nature...don't keep their promisses!
Nice post!

runnerfrog said...

Thanks Clara, for stopping by and for your words. And excuse the delay: complicated days.

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