No Matter the Consequences

Just a little while ago, I was reading Chasing the Flame, a book about Sergio Vierra de Mello, and I watched the American Experience movies on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Needless to say, these things both made me tremendously sad yet filled me with a desire to live a life fighting against injustice, regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, that is not what I do right now. But I am working on that. Kind of.

One thing that stood out, was this poem that Robert Kennedy was fond of by Aeschylus (he read it the night Dr. King was assassinated):

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Each time I read these words, they move me.

Kennedy, above the other two I mentioned, was taken before he was able to show any of his real potential. With Kennedy's death, Nixon was elected to the presidency. I cannot even comprehend (but others can) the different world we might have lived in had RFK lived and won instead of Nixon.