GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--Jan. 27, 2004 -- Warts and pluses!  Warts and pluses!
          The words rang in my ears as I scanned the recent political news.   The comment was reported in the New York Times by a frustrated voter in New Hampshire yet undecided about who to vote for.   He was confused because, he said, all seven of the candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination had "pluses and warts."

        He hadn't made his mind up yet who had the most "warts."
         I thought about the idea of human beings walking around with plus signs and warts splattered on their faces, necks, arms, chests as residue of either acts of Vigilance or acts of Terrorism.
         What if, when a person issued some form of Emotional Terrorism to a child or another person, a wart would pop out, its size dependent on the degree of the Terrorism.  Equally, when the person acted in a Vigilant manner toward a child or another person, a plus sign would appear, shining brightly so that all could see.
         Warts and Pluses!
         I thought about walking down the street and seeing the mixture branded on people's faces as they scurried to work.   If, for example, a father was abrupt with his children in the morning, more concerned with pleasing the boss than in giving the kids a big hug and love, a wart would begin to grow in the middle of his forehead, shaped like a child's face.

         Or, there is the mother who is busy fixing her face and scanning the mirror so that she looks her best while her children are fixing their own breakfast.   She tells them not to "bother her" while she's getting ready, and her daughter freezes, wondering why her "mommy" doesn't want to talk to her about the spelling test she has this morning.   A wart begins to form on the mother's nose, small at first, but growing.
        On the obverse, there is the mother and father who scoop their kids in their arms in the morning, give them big hugs and tell them they are loved more than a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.   They laugh and a giant plus pops up on the parents' earlobes, sparkling and iridescent.

       Flicking on the television to catch the morning weather report, the screen is filled with politicians slamming one another, slinging arrows at each other as rabidly as their frothing mouths can move.    The talking heads are blobs of warts, with only a few pluses struggling to shine through the carcinogenic scabs that erupt from their heads, necks and bulge through the fabric of their shirts and jackets.
       What if each time we faced Fear and let it chew at us like rat gnawing on the scraps of a wounded pigeon, a wart would appear.   Or what if when we felt Intimidated by someone or something and walked about with a sense of self-defeat, self-depreciation, another wart would begin to grow and grow until it became so large we could hardly walk.  

        And, of course, the worse of all, Complacency.  What if we felt so powerless to do anything that we just shrugged our shoulders and imagined ourselves nailed to a cross, a victim of life, resolved to not be able to change, stuck in a rut of uselessness and despair, repeating what the despairing author Franz Kafka once wrote about the human condition:  "There is infinite hope--but not for us."
        In a way, we wear our Terrorism or our Vigilance by how we walk, how we think and how we act.    The people's lives we touch apply to us warts or pluses.   The inconsiderate person who thinks everyone is a nail and he or she is a hammer, treats others like they would gnats, brushing them out of their way, giving little heed to the needs or concerns of others when it conflicts with their own.    The people in such a person's path issue warts.  They paste them on the person, at least in their mind.
       Children do the same.    The parent or guardian who is neglectful, or outright abusive at either a physical or emotional level, creates a wart in the child's mind.    Many children are fearful of their parents' emotions.  They don't know when the Beast of Terror will explode within them, so they shy from running to them and jumping in their laps, or asking them to share in their lives for fear they will receive some rebuttal that will reject them.
        They shrink into the walls, emotionally or physically.  They feel the barriers between their parents and themselves, cold concrete that can't be smashed.   The warts on their parents grow, looming into monstrous disfigurements.   Psychiatrists' couches are littered with the bodies of children of wart monsters.
        The problems with warts and pluses is that most people don't realize they are producing warts, either within their own systems or by default when they act against another's welfare.

       Few of us perform a daily inventory on our warts and pluses because we rush through life without a plan.    We forget the Beast of Terror is working minute-by-minute to remove our Vigilance and infiltrate our lives, just as the Terrorists in Iraq are constantly setting mines and booby traps to harass and demoralize us into retreat.
        The Beast is quick to slip in some Fear, Intimidation and Complacency whenever he gets the chance.   He prefers selfishness to selflessness, and will do his best to put us into a headlong mode to sate ourselves at the expense of others.
        We can only counter his nature by arming ourselves with wart remover.    All warts can be cut away.  They can be replaced with pluses.
        There is an adage that goes:  "You're not responsible for your first thought but you are your second thought."    Basically, this means that our minds tend to sink to the lowest level--personal survival.    In that mode, we will do what we need to do to get what we want to get.    The fine line between our animal instincts and our humanity--our responsibility to others--is put under stress.   When the animal instincts take over, we will act like a Terrorist.  We will do what we need to do without forethought, even if it means wounding or maiming others. 

        But, if we are aware that the gravity of our nature must be checked, we reinforce our minds just as we do our bodies with food and exercise.  We take the Pledge of Vigilance and renew our vow to fight Fear with Courage, to battle Intimidation with Conviction, and to quash Complacency with Right Actions that benefit the Children's Children's Children.
        So when a wart pops out on the tip of our nose, we see it.   We realize we may have done or thought something that fuels the Beast of Terror wart machine.    We repair the damage.   We either change our Fear to Courage and our Intimidation to Conviction, or our Complacency to Right Actions that benefit future generations.
       If we are short with people we stop, repair the damage, apologize and move on.  If we are neglectful to our children we don't buy them gifts to assuage the damage, we sit with them and explain that we made a mistake, that their concerns trump all others, and we spend the time to let them know that altering our behavior is more important than ignoring it.   We let our children see we are fallible, to let them know they are too.
        We hold up the Sword and Shield of Vigilance.   We turn the wart into a plus, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the children, for the sake of humanity.
        Kafka's dismal view of humanity saw the shadow of the Beast of Terror cast long and deep on our future.   His view that infinite hope existed, but not for us, was a concession or a warning that humanity will be defeated in its evolution to higher planes unless we fight back.    Hope is a human quality.   It doesn't exist within the body of the Beast.  Hope is the ability to change, and it will not belong to anyone unless they reach for it and take it.

       All human warts can be repaired.  They can be replaced with pluses.    Vigilance is the tool to surgically remove the warts.   But it will not drop from the sky without seeding the clouds with Courage, Conviction and Right Actions.
        Think about how many warts you might have.
        Think about what you are doing to remove the warts.
        Then, take the Pledge of Vigilance.  Find out how you can remove the warts from yourself, and protect your children from growing their own.
        Be a wartless Sentinel of Vigilance. 

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