At The Flea Market - Bruce Silverman

[Larry Robinson]

At The Flea Market

 

Last week at the flea market I spied Mahatma Ghandi, Rabbi Abraham Heschel and the Reverend Martin Luther King perusing a small two-pan balancing scale.

One pan was marked good, the other evil. 

 

A discussion then ensued. Said Heschel: this scale is flawed: “the opposite of good is not evil, it’s indifference.”

 

Ghandi replied: yes, I agree, for “good and evil often are found together.” Then Dr. King spoke and said:

 

I find this scale to be befuddling because “there’s some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” 

 

With that they simply walked off.

I timidly stepped forward and bought the scale.

 

I took it home and measured the weights sitting in the two pans marked good and evil. And here is what I found:

 

When compared, good and evil seem to be about equal in

measure, but clearly, at times like this,

 

it’s necessary to put a finger on the scale.

	
	- Bruce Silverman