On My Birthday I Can Write Anything I Want To

Richard Matt and David Sweat, the two escaped convicts in New York/Vermont can be shot on sight and no one much will care.  Certainly not me. That's why they are considered outlaws. Open season on them, right?

But I have a contrarian shadow that comes from the darker side of my soul. Existentially speaking. There is a fragment of feeling within me that identifies with Matt and Sweat: do they not represent my struggles against the world, or the prospects of our all of our transient, flawed and fragile lives against inevitable death? Fleeting hope vs certain doom? Having a case cancer of cancer promotes this POV

Maybe I like the hunt & chase as a form of authentic competition.

Are not Matt & Sweat Warrior-Brothers? These men, for whom very few people have expressed anything but contempt, and for whom the notion of “family” may have had predominantly negative connotations, may consider themselves blood brothers. I would bet on it.

In this situation, can the causes of Justice & Hope be opposed? Justice requires that these two thugs be shot down like mad dogs before they kill again. Given the chance, I would shoot them down. But Hope aspires that they escape certain capture and death to teach us something about the virtue of perseverance against all odds. Like Matt & Sweat as Bonnie  & Clyde escaping from Alcatraz?

The best possible outcome is that the two never kill again. Whatever else happens.