“A problem is never significant…until it becomes your own.”

“No occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often.”—MT

• People showing no empathy toward those less fortunate, until they join their ranks.
• People with adequate health insurance not identifying with those who don’t, until they don’t either.
• Parents opposing gay people, until their own child turns out to be gay.
• Seeing war as a glorious endeavor, until they experience it themselves or lose a loved one to it.

These and an untold number of other examples show us all that we are not our brother’s keeper—we are our brother, sister, mother, father or children. Some will say, “I am only responsible for myself and those of my alliances,” forgetting that their fundamental alliance is with humanity. Lest we think ignoring a problem gets us off the hook, more than 1,900 years ago a Greek philosopher noted: “The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.”