By Tom Dodge, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – The man in his twenties is momentarily maddened by testosterone overflow and snatches a baseball from a four-year-old boy. A man in his eighties serenely cuts and carves tiny cars as gifts for sick and injured children. These two stories on the same page of the newspaper add to the examples of polarity I see all around me, all the time.
A severe officer stopped me in Knox County for an offense against the state. My car had no license plate on the front bumper. He intimidated and humiliated me in front of my son and grandson. He lectured me coldly and even implied that since I was nervous I must have something to hide. A few miles down the highway, our radiator blew. Shortly a highway patrol officer from Dickens County spotted us, crossed the line of his jurisdiction, and summoned a tow truck for the car. Because he was concerned about the heat's effect on a small boy, he carried son and grandson fifty miles into Dickens, where they could wait until I came in with the tow truck. Two officers of the same state: one belittling, the other gracious.
As a friend of mine lay dying, his wife left him for another man. He thought he had no option other than the nursing home. Then, two women who knew him only as a gifted writer took him into their home and cared for him in the final two months of his life. They adored him and never left him alone. They kissed him each time they left the house. Both stated at his funeral that caring for him had been the high point of their lives.
These stories represent the duality of life. Severity, grace; selfishness, altruism; enmity, love - these are the polarities within us all. Either urge can be triggered at any time. By admiring the woodcarver and deploring the ball-snatcher we hope to balance the dual urges within ourselves. "An inevitable dualism bisects nature," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay, "Compensation." And if a man is coarse and has no civility in him, he went on, nature might give him "pretty sons and daughters (and his) love for them smooth his grim scowl to courtesy." Compensation occurs in many ways. To compensate for the racist beliefs of an acquaintance of mine, nature gave him a Mexican son-in-law, an Asian daughter-in-law, four Black step-grandchildren and a Black daughter-in-law.
The country is said to be polarized now and the media therefore seize on events to unify us. By his bad behavior, the ball-snatcher gave us an opportunity to feel good together. But it isn't a good feeling that we need. We need to work on our balance. Every angry ideologue has within his breast the repressed urge toward tolerance, and the sainted among us sometimes has thought of murder. With each car carved for the hospitalized children, Mr. Scoggins works on his balance. The ball-snatcher already rues his insane dive for glory and has atoned.
His error at the ballpark showed us the bad effects of unrestrained testosterone and the zeal to be a winner at any cost. But at the same time it evoked in us the virtues of grace and justice, and the hope that we might also come together in dealing with the much bigger errors we have made as a country.
Tom Dodge is a writer from Midlothian. If you have opinions or rebuttals about this commentary, call (214) 740-9338 or email us.