Because the personal injury lawyer, Tim Misny, has law offices all over Ohio, it is likely that many reading this blog have seen his large billboard signs.
Misny’s very large, no nonsense, earnest-looking, billboard picture gets your attention. With his arresting picture – including his impressively ringed finger pointing aggressively right at you, Misny’s slogan reads, “I’ll Make Them Pay.”
I have often seen Misny’s now rather ubiquitous billboard signs and wondered at the plural pronoun. Who is the “them” that he will make pay? How much does he make “them” pay? And why does he want me to know – at no small advertising cost – that he makes “them” pay?
According to his website, Misny represents clients who are themselves, or the immediate family members of, persons who have suffered as the result of medical malpractice and negligence by providers of health care resulting in catastrophic injury or death. There are more such categories of victims and a list of those described as “them” that Misny has worked to make pay. But you get the picture.
Misny wants you and me to know that he makes “them” pay because if you or a loved one has become a victim of such tragic things, he would like to talk with you any time 24/7, excluding weekends, about your situation. The conversation will be a crucial first step to determine if there is any financial liability and damages that can be proven by a “preponderance of evidence.”
OK. Now please know that I am more than aware of the terrible suffering and often great financial challenges which occur because of accident injuries and healthcare outcomes which are far from reasonable or to be expected. I get it.
But as the holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas are immanent and as we are immersed in the stories of inextinguishable light, hope in any darkness, and freedom told through symbolic candles as well as guiding starlight, I am jarringly struck by a life slogan – no matter how intended – “I’ll Make Them Pay.”
I am soul weary of the voices of those who seem to live their lives in a spirit of – and seeking to in some way profit by – constant grievance.
It is frightening to me that we have become so susceptible to, tolerant of and accustomed to rewarding voices of grievance. Examples abound.
For instance, in too many places we elect the well contrived and practiced voices of political grievance to congress. We reward the religious masters of grievance by filling their mega churches and their personal bank accounts. And of course, what is worse, we allow most all these voices of grievance – political and religious – to misrepresent the life of an infant once laid in a manger and who grew to live out a life of love and hope as the power behind a present-day culture war.
Our seeming culture of grievance – too often focused on trying to make some “them” of subjective defining pay – is eating away at the fabric of a caring, generous, freedom-loving and promoting people. In a culture of grievance while making some hysterically defined “them” pay for whatever hurt or perceived personal disappointment we have experienced, our ability to draw strength from hope has been gravely wounded.
Rather than a nourished ability to rely on an abiding and amazing grace, grievance has become MEGA and MAGA. Fears of all sorts seem to abound in conspiracy. The result is an aggressive cancer of the heart, mind, and spirit that has metastasized into a prevailing attitude of trying to find out and name who is thought to be blamed for all sorts of injury and then “to make them pay”!
In his 2018 book “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels” Jon Meacham writes:
“The opposite of fear is hope, defined as the expectation of good fortune not only for ourselves but for the group to which we belong. Fear feeds anxiety and produces anger; hope, particularly in a political sense, breeds optimism and feelings of well-being. Fear is about limits; hope is about growth. Fear casts its eyes warily, even shiftily across the landscape; hope looks forward, toward the horizon. Fear points at others, assigning blame; hope points ahead, working for a common good. Fear pushes away; hope pulls others closer. Fear divides; hope unifies.”
Meacham could not be more correct. Neither could the enduring messages of this holy season. Telling this story is critical. Our soul depends on it.
Fear Not! No matter what, do not lose hope!