Time and hate

After you finish writing a book, you find yourself spending an amazing amount of time writing about what the book is about. This place wants a 500 word description.  That ad must be 80 words or less.  Nope, only 200 characters allowed here and spaces count.  It is an annoying process that results in sub-optimum word choices and bad phrasing.

But it has forced me to distill down to few words what each of my books truly concerns, and that is a worthwhile exercise. Just today a friend helped me realize that z2 is, more than anything, about time and hate, and about what time does to hate. (You can read her review of the book on Amazon.com here.)

Time can funnel hatred into a concentrate that is far more lethal than the original emotion, or time can allow hatred to evaporate into the vapor that it always was.  The first process is scary, the second is uplifting. Case in point.  According to PoliceOne.com, the police chief from Montgomery Alabama recently apologized to U.S. Representative John Lewis who was among the freedom riders in 1961 who were beaten during the civil rights movement while police did nothing to help them.

Unlike the recent scandal in British Columbia wherein BC Premier Christy Clark’s staff cynically suggested that she could get some political quick wins by apologizing to previously wronged ethnic groups, presumably Police Chief Kevin Murphy had nothing to gain from his apology other than, in his own words, doing the the right thing.

z2 is also about hope. Hope that Kevin Murphy was sincere.  Hope that leaders in BC might one day apologize for past wrongs because it is the right thing to do.  Hope that we all will be a little better, with time.