Michael's Musings:
Living Backwards

Maybe it's an idiosyncracy of those who have Mercury in Gemini in their birth horoscope, but I sometimes find myself looking at words to see what they would spell out if you read the letters in reverse order. When a word spells the same thing in either direction, like deed, I think it's called a palindrome.

But once in a while you find a word that means something quite the opposite when spelled backwards, and I don't know if there is an official name for this. One of the most interesting ones, in my opinion, is the following, which I hope will give you something to think about.

LIVE spelled backwards is EVIL.

In other words, EVIL is the result when you LIVE backwards. If one's philosophy of life is to seek happiness (or contentment or joy or love), and to make choices which would lead to those things; then to make choices which would not lead to them would be living in a way which is "backwards" compared to the pursuit of happiness.

This, to me, is the essence of Evil.

I have come to believe that Evil is not a real thing, but kind of a no-thing. It is really a lack of a real thing - like dark is a lack of light.

Evil is a lack of Love. And all the things which men do that we call evil are the result of choosing to turn away from Love, to act in unloving ways.

I speak here of "capital-L" Love, the "spiritual" kind of love, which includes the love humans share for each other, but also things like compassion and good will, and most of all, the kind of unconditional love where we love someone without expecting anything in return.

Love seeks only to give, not to take. Love appreciates, and does not judge. Love is creative, not destructive. Love leads to happiness, lack of Love to unhappiness.

I find it interesting that by rearranging the letters of EVIL, you get the word VEIL, which is something that hides or conceals, like an illusion conceals the truth. Perhaps EVIL is what results from a mistake made by believing in an illusion that what one is choosing will lead to happiness; when the truth is that it will only lead to unhappiness.

I find it even more interesting that the word SIN comes from a term used in archery, which means to miss the mark - in other words, a mistake.

©1999 by Michael Star