… the first encounter that Dante has on his journey down into the Inferno is with an endless stream of those who are described to him as neither good nor bad. This miserable throng is ferried down into the underworld by Charon whose endless task it was to go back and forth across the river. He has to hurry them on by striking them with his oars to hurry them, because there are so many of them.
“.. neither good nor bad” an ocean of the banal, the unthinking, the accidental.
And isn’t that exactly what life becomes for us when we don’t choose, when we have no clear intention. Isn’t that what life becomes when we listen to the talking heads on tele-vision telling us what our vision should be.
None of it overwhelmingly good, nor overwhelmingly bad, simply an ocean of the banal, the mediocre, and the mundane.
My grandmother was fond of saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
And Dr. Martin Luther King said, “All that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.”
How easy it is to fall asleep, to do nothing, to be satisfied with compromise.
What are you doing? And what are you intending to do?
