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There are few things in life that confuse me more than people who believe passionately in human rights and social justice… and then show no grace to the people in their own lives.

I just don’t get it.

How can you work for the rights and freedoms of people thousands of miles away and then treat your friends/family/co-workers/random strangers around you like assholes?

The reality is that people across the world — or across town — will always seem more worthy of your effort or charity when the people in your own life disappoint you.

You can idealize their struggle because it doesn’t impact your daily existence.

And that disconnect between the personal sphere and the external world is what leads to a sort of ideological tunnel vision. Tunnel vision that taints our most noble goals with irony.

Tunnel vision that divides the world into two groups: deserving and undeserving.

I’m not against anger and frustration at the state of the world. Not even for a second.

How anyone turns on the news or flips through a paper or walks down the street without developing a raging disenchantment with so much of what goes on around us, I don’t know. I can’t say enough about how much I respect those who work to restore the rights and freedoms of marginalized people in our society.

But I also don’t know how you can desire hope for some people, and then treat the people you are mandated to care for personally… well, like shit.

Yet we fail to question this brand of emotional compartmentalization.

I can’t imagine how the world would actually change if every person made an effort to show mercy to all those they connect with in the course of a day.

Would it be hard? Yes.

Would it be reciprocated all the time? No.

Would it feel stupid a good portion of the time? You know it.

But our small scale bonds within our marriages, relationships, families, friendships, workplaces — even the way we interact with strangers on the street — are the connections and disconnections on which tribes and sects and factions and movements are built the world over.

Are you more noble because you verbally abuse your spouse, instead of making her wear a veil?

Are you more noble because you write a blog post about how much you hate someone who disagrees with you, instead of punching them in the face?

Are you more noble because you despise your father for his political beliefs or lack thereof, instead of denying him the right to have any views at all?

Are you more noble because you judge your mother for her religious convictions or lack thereof, instead of putting her in jail for what she believes?

Are you more noble because you are simply rude and thoughtless to strangers, instead of murderous?

You can justify it all you like. You can even call it “tolerance”, because you’re not hurting anyone, right? And you’re standing up for the right things!

Everyone believes that, though.

Some of the most evil people on the face of the earth believe that their anger towards others is utterly justified and right and good.

They just take those feelings one step further.

Instead of seething about someone, they blow them up.

And if that choice is where you think hate becomes a problem, think again. Where do news events and wars and criminal legacies and political dramas begin?

I think they begin with people just like us who made the wrong choices based on what they believed was right, whether yesterday or 300 years ago.

The kind of choices we face every single day.

And all it takes is one choice for everything to fall apart.

I would put forward the notion that our hope lies in consistency. That our hope lies in recognizing our personal responsibility towards the health of our society. That the only way to keep passion and conviction in our beliefs is to move forward in grace and hope and love, not misanthropy.

That we become the people we expect others to be.

And I believe this will be what keeps us committed to bringing soldiers home from war. This will be what keeps money flowing towards gifted people trying to cure diseases. This will be what will end child poverty. This will be what makes a dent in religious intolerance.

I truly believe that this is what will let you sleep at night in a world where everything happens for the wrong reasons.

Find a way to change the five feet around you, and the five hundred thousand miles beyond will come, too.

I’m not perfect. As far from it as you can get, really. I know I can be an asshole. And I don’t get this right all the time, by any stroke of the imagination.

I just want more light in my life than the one at the end of the tunnel.