That is a powerful metaphor. Viewing enmity as a ditch captures how holding onto deep hostility trap both people involved.
It mirrors the famous philosophy popularized by educator Booker T. Washington: "You are not able to hold another man down in the ditch without staying down there with him."
When you nurse enmity toward someone, it alters your path:
It traps your energy: You have to look down and exhaust your own effort just to keep someone else beneath you.
It halts your progress: While you are consumed by the hostility of the ditch, you cannot move forward, grow, or look toward the horizon.
It levels the playing field: Ultimately, the person trying to keep someone in the mud ends up just as muddy.
Choosing to let go of that hostility isn't about letting the other person "win"âit's about climbing out of the ditch so you can actually keep walking.
Mar. 29, 186- The toads has come out. fine warm day. me and Potter Gorham have been ketching toads this afternoon. they sit in the pudles and peep. folks think it is frogs but most of it is toads. Potter got 23 and i got 18. tonite i put my toads in a box in the kitchen after the folks went to bed. in the night they all got out of the box and began to hop round and peep mother heard it and waked father and they lissened. when i waked up father was coming threw my room with a big cane and a little tin lamp. he had put on his britches and was in his shirt tale, and i said, what are you going to lick me for now i havent done nothing and he said, keep still there is some one down stairs and mother said dont go down George and father said, lissen i can hear him giving a whistle for his confedrit, i will jump in and give him a whack on the cokonut. i had forgot all about the toads and you bet i was scart. well father he crep down easy and blowed out his lite and opened the door quick and jest lammed round with his club. then i heard him say what in hell have i stepped on, bring a lite here. then i though of the toads and you bet i was scarter than before, mother went down with a lite and then i heard him say, i will be cussed the whole place is ful of toads. then mother said did you ever. and father said he never did, and it was some more of that dam boys works and he yelled upstairs for me to come down and ketch them. so i went down and caught them and put them out all but 2 that father had stepped on and they had to be swep up. then all the folks came down in their nitegounds and i went up stairs lively and got into bed and pulled the clothes round me tite, but it dident do enny good for father came up and licked me. he dident lick me very hard becaus i gess he was glad it wasent a berglar and if it hadent been for me it might have been berglars insted of toads.
The last time I ate a raw bison brain it turned me from an introverted geezer to an extroverted geyser. What a mess! I'm doing a hot bubble-up just thinking about it...
Is this the new AU?
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Could be. If so everybody's welcome!
Hi five if your old Gram had one of those and you checked your speed reflexes only to lose and scream like a girl til it bumped out...
I was going to call it 260,000 Dreads In One Dose but that sounded like bad drugs which apparently puts it too close to the original AU...
