داستان انگلیسی زدن پل ها

Building Bridges

Nelson Mandela once said, “Hatred is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” In other words, not being able to forgive is self-defeating. Mandela, an activist and the first democratically elected president of South Africa, is an icon for peace and forgiveness. He spent 27 years in prison. He was separated from his family and friends. He suffered hard labor, solitary confinement and humiliation at the hands of his captors.

When he finally became free, it would have been easy for him to give in to hatred. It would have been easy for him to seek revenge. Instead, he chose to forgive and set an example for the world.

Of course, some things are easy to forgive, but other things are more difficult to let go. Where you stand on whether the next man deserves forgiveness might depend on how much you use the internet.

In 1994, the internet was still in its infancy. At that time, Ethan Zuckerman was a computer programmer for Tripod.com. Tripod’s biggest achievement was the creation of an easy to use website builder. Tripod offered free websites, and in exchange, Tripod sold ads on their users’ websites.The problem was there were all kinds of tripod websites with all kinds of content.

When a car company became upset because its ad was appearing on a Tripod website showing sexual content, Ethan found the solution. He would show the ad in a separate window, so advertisers would no longer complain about what kind of website their ad was connected to.

Ethan created the pop-up ad. These pop-ups are the windows that pop up over internet sites blocking the article you’re trying to read. These ads have been getting under the skin of people all over the world and making their blood boil for years. Who is responsible? Ethan Zuckerman.

Ethan now regrets creating the pop-up ad, but says, “Our intentions were good.” While this might be true, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Ethan has been accused of ruining the internet. He has even had death threats. He is sorry for what he did, but he now believes the pop-up ad wasn’t his biggest crime. He thinks helping to create an internet where everything is free was far worse.

Of course, nothing on the internet is truly free. It’s an attention economy. We don’t pay money for services like Gmail, Facebook, and YouTube, but we do pay with the attention that we give to ads. In other words, “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” Your attention is being sold to advertisers who want to sell products to you. We are drowning in a sea of advertisements that pester us with flashing ads, auto-playing videos, and pop-ups.

Ethan calls the current advertising fueled internet, “bad, broken, and corrosive.” He believes without advertising the internet would have soon crumbled. And it would have been replaced by a new internet where people pay for what interests them.While it’s easy to understand why Ethan created the popup, some crimes are harder to forgive.

Hector Black once found himself in such a dilemma.

As a World War Two veteran, Hector was familiar with man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. Yet he always saw the good in people and tried to do the right thing. In the 1960s he became a civil rights activist. He moved to Atlanta to assist Martin Luther King in his quest for equality.

Hector practiced what he preached and adopted a nine-year-old called Patricia Ann Nuckles. Patricia was from a troubled background. Her mother was an alcoholic schizophrenic. In her new home, the shy little girl blossomed.

Patricia graduated from college and decided to follow in her father’s footsteps. She found a job helping people.

One evening in 2001, a drug-addict named Ivan Simpson broke into Patricia’s house.

He overpowered her and then lectured her on how to prevent a burglary. In turn, Patricia told Ivan he needed help for his drug habit and made him some food. Ivan reacted to the woman’s kindness by killing her.Her father was devastated. Hector explained, “I’d never been in favor of the death penalty, but I wanted that man to hurt the way he had hurt her. I wanted him to hurt the way I was hurting.”

Hector wanted to know, “What kind of a monster would do a thing like this.”

A glimpse into Ivan’s background painted a harrowing picture. He was born in a mental hospital. When he was 11, his mother drowned his little sister in front of his eyes. She said God had ordered her to kill Ivan as well.

Hector didn’t know any of this when he surprisingly asked the authorities to spare the life of the man who murdered his daughter.

At Ivan’s trial, Hector said, “I don’t hate you, Ivan Simpson, but I hate with all my soul what you did to my daughter.”

For the first time, Hector looked Ivan in the eye. He described it as looking at a soul trapped in hell. He offered him the following words of comfort, “I wished for all of us who had been so wounded by this crime, I wish that we might find God’s peace. And I wish that also for you, Ivan Simpson.”

Such a heartfelt gesture reduced the killer to tears. He replied, “I’m so sorry for the pain I’ve caused.”

These words carried a lot of weight with Hector. He believes in their sincerity.

The two now exchange letters and have strangely become friends. Hector knows that people think he is a fool for forgiving Ivan, but he explained that he had no choice but to forgive. Hector said, “The Lord knows we all need to be forgiven.”Hector chose to not poison himself with hatred. After being imprisoned, beaten, starved and tortured for nearly two years, former POW Eric Lomax waited almost 50 years to make a similar choice.

Lomax was a British prisoner of the Japanese army during World War Two. He worked on the 300-mile ‘death railway’ in Thailand. While Lomax loved trains as a young boy, the irony was a bitter pill to swallow.

The work was hard, and the conditions were brutal. He tried to escape, but the plan was foiled by the guards. Lomax and four others were beaten so badly that two of them died.

They locked a bruised and battered Lomax in a five-foot cage. He was left to rot in his own filth.

A shaven-headed soldier who spoke no English would randomly torture Lomax while an interpreter asked him questions. The interpreter’s name was Nagase.

Lomax hated Nagase more than the soldier who tortured him. The interpreter’s voice gave the broken and starving prisoner no rest. He taunted Lomax by saying, “Lomax, you will be killed shortly whatever happens…Lomax, you will tell us everything.”

His torture finally ended when he was sent to a prison in Singapore. The rest of the war would be brutal, but he would survive.

Survival came with its own psychological scars. Lomax was often crippled with rage by the smallest things. His hatred for the enemy remained strong, and he never forgot Nagase.Bitterness continued to eat away at Lomax’s soul. And then one day, out of the blue an old friend sent him a newspaper clipping about a former Japanese soldier who had written a book apologizing for his actions during the war. It was Nagase, the interpreter. Since the war had ended he became an active protester of wars both past and present. He had also become a priest and built a temple at the River Kwai, the same area that he had participated in torturing Lomax.

Keeping tabs on Nagase became Lomax’s obsession. He read his book and then wrote to him through his wife. After corresponding politely, they decided to meet.

After all those years, Lomax was still secretly harboring hatred for Nagase. He flew across the world with the intention of killing Nagase, but after finally meeting him everything changed.

In 1993, nearly 50 years later, the two old soldiers met on the bridge across the river Kwai.

A nervous Nagase bowed and said, “I am very, very sorry. I never forgot you. We treated your countrymen very, very badly.”

Lomax acknowledged war brings out the worst in all of us, regardless of nationality.

He simply replied, “We both survived.”

Lomax finally forgave Nagase and said, “I have proved for myself that remembering is not enough if it simply hardens hate. Some time the hating has to stop.” Nagase’s humble response was, “I think I can die safely now.”Lomax told the New York Times, “I had come with no sympathy for this man, and yet Nagase, through his complete humility, turned this around. In the days that followed we spent a lot of time together, talking and laughing.” He added, “We promised to keep in touch and have remained friends ever since.” Lomax and Nagase died a year apart in 2011 and 2012 after maintaining a friendship through their twilight years.