Charley & Terry and Michael & Fredo

We have a loyalty to each other as human beings, but we expect the family that shares our blood to have the deepest loyalty. I looked at the movies "Godfather II" and "On the Waterfront" recently. Terry Malloy and Michael Corleone were betrayed by their brothers in separate ways. Terry's brother Charley was killed by gangsters and Michael was a gangster himself, so he arranged for his brother Fredo to get killed. Fredo's crime was giving Michael's rival gangsters information about his business dealings that motivated a failed attempt on his life. Charley arranged Terry in his gang's business dealings, and when Terry eventually wanted out, Charley was killed.

I wondered why brothers would betray each other in two very different ways that eventually led to their death. Right behind that thought, came the question of why people betray themselves only to end up in debt, pregnant, sick, or dead behind the decisions they made.

In my opinion, most of us have the same thought as Fredo and Charley before they died, "I never thought it would come to this."

For you and I it has not come to that, and that is more real than Charley and Fredo's fate. We are real, they are imagined.