Re: RAT ANTI-NATO-ART

[InTheLime@aol.com]

In a message dated 99-04-15 17:04:08 EDT, you write:

<< But no, Aileen , I felt worse- not better - for writing that letter. Go to 
the website and see if it doesn't  stir something in you, as well....>>

As always, I suggest that once we get into one of these things, the initiator 
might wish to step back and not take the responses personally.  Just like 
when we do a show, what the audience draws from the 30 to 120+ minutes is not 
in our power to control. 

An apology letter was written - to an entire people - to let them know that 
one person is not his country.  There was some instinctual sense (in my 
reading) of guilt being assuaged by a letter.  There's a fine line when 
making an apology between what makes us feel "good" and "bad."   Apology is 
meant to cleanse (and in your case, to cleanse your conscience of the evil 
that the rest of us are perpetrating - to tell Serbians that not all 
Americans are bad guys).   We feel bad, so we apologize, and then we feel 
that we have done what we could do to heal the breech.  And then, frequently, 
we feel bad again when we realize how little we have actually done by saying 
"I'm sorry."

I am stirred as well...I know there is more I can do.  As you say, I could be 
over there instead of debating from my office desk.  I'm choosing to save 
that energy.  It is a choice I make...which stirs me even more, because I 
realize my choices are many, while the Serbians and Albanians have very few 
choices...I wish there was more me, and more time.  I wish, I wish...if 
wishes were fish...

--Aileen