The Zen Master's Message

It's been a bit of a whirlwind around here with all three kids home and everyone flying off in various directions to reconnect with family and friends, so forgive this post if it seems a bit sleep deprived.

We did manage to see a good movie Saturday night, Charlie Wilson's War (with Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Phillip Seymour Hoffman), which I recommend. In particular, I was struck by one compelling vignette in which Hoffman, playing a CIA agent, recounts the "zen master's story." I would butcher it if I tried to paraphrase it, but the message is that things are not always what they seem. Or as the zen master says, "We'll see." Incidents that seem tragic at the outset sometimes turn out to be blessings in disguise and vice versa. Time is the determining factor in many outcomes and sometimes it takes a long time for the meaning to play out.

The point in question is the American intervention in Afghanistan which as we all know, came back to bite us, but at the time seemed like the right thing to do. The problem was that we didn't finish what we set out to do in the first place and our good intentions got lost in the shuffle.

And so how does this apply to the Barbaro story, one might ask facetiously? The moral may be to hang in there with the best of intentions and keep building the case for support. Or it may simply be that whatever happens will turn out to be for the best.