Enticed

I was standing at the lights near the Botanic Gardens on Macquarie St today waiting for the lights. I was listening to my diskman and looking at the building across the road. It had three statues on the corner built into it's facade. They were called "Mercy", "Compassion" and "Justice". I found this very interesting, I thought about the fact that they were three attributes of God, wondered about whether or not they were an ideal lived up to by the designers of the building, and what they might look like up close.

As I was staring at these, the beeper for the crossing went off, so I started off towards the statues, thinking only about getting a closer look. As I walked across the road I noticed there was a black 4WD coming very quickly towards me. I thought "That person is obviously is not obeying the road rules." I looked up at the little green man and found, to my confusion, that he was red.

I looked around and found myself in the middle of peak hour Sydney, with everything driving towards me. I ran for the other side of the road, realising that the beeping had been for the other crossing next to me and feeling rather embarrassed that lots of people just saw me do something vague and stupid enough to get myself killed. Like Odysseus'' sirens, the lure of Mercy, Compassion and Justice had enticed my towards my death. But I'll tell you I forgot all about them when I was about to get run over.

So the moral to the story is: When confronted by the imminent death (or severe physical injury) mercy, compassion and justice go out the window.