Every life is a story.
For each one of us, life is the same; we all live, and we die.
Yet, at the same time, each is as unique as one snowflake is to the next; we live, and we die in so many different ways.
What Life Taught Me
What follows is a story written for all who wish to know why an old man thinks and believes as he does.
It’s not special; I’m not anything special. At least not in my mind. I’m more what most call ‘weird.’
On the other hand, everything I’ve seen and experienced, others have done so as well.
What makes the difference is not in seeing or experiencing, but the perspective from which they are seen and experienced.
So I have appointed myself to say this out loud — to challenge the standard and the norm, or what is usually called “The Status Quo.”
Why is it that they look at what I look at but do not see what I see?
Regrets, I’ve Had a Few, But The Again…Quite a Few…actually.
Yes, many regrets, not just a few, and many things I would change if I could, especially those hurtful, foolish, selfish, and vile behaviors that subdued and extinguished the good I might have done.
All of it held lessons.
Lessons that I hope I’ve learned from.
Lessons that I hope made me wiser.
But they all taught me that humans are basically liars.
No, not in the sense of dishonesty toward others, but all humans live to lie to themselves.
Self-deception is the only way humanity can survive.
People never know us for who we are; they know us only by who WE THINK WE ARE, by that facade that we put on when others are present.
What we’re thinking, desires, longings, what we do in private, what deception we practice, and the secrets we keep. Those are the TRUE us.
Learning From Life’s Lessons
Actions and behaviors, those things that we should learn from, often leave us completely unaffected, or at least oblivious to their importance.
What has humanity learned after 6000 years of recorded history? Have we learned from our errors? Does every human read the history books and say, “Well, damn! We’re never doing that again!”
In the business world, they are known as: ‘Errors and Omissions?’
Our foibles, our errors and omissions, repeated over and over, are like rainstorms that pass in the night. We barely notice them.
We ALL believe ourselves to be ‘normal.’
A Life Without Regrets
Over the years, I have heard that dubious and ridiculous statement more times than I care to remember:
“If I had to live my life over again, I would do it the exact same way! One hundred percent! Yes sir! I have no regrets!”
Ignorance of that degree should never go unchallenged.
To live a life without regret means that one is either a sociopath or completely oblivious to their own existence. A narcissist of the highest degree.
(One very prominent political figure comes to mind at the moment.)
Moral Accountability
It comes down to a matter of moral accountability.
Those whom I’ve wronged, the immorality I practiced, the deceptions, lies, thefts (petty or otherwise), fornications, secret hatreds, secret lusts, envies, jealousies, etc, and so on.
Beyond that is our accountability for the human condition. By our everyday actions of greed, hatred, prejudice, jealousy, lust, waste, pollution, and so on — an endless list of adjectives we repeatedly suborn the failures of humanity, and consequently repeat our failures over, and over, and over.
What I Have Come To Recognize
The truth of the matter is that we, humanity, cannot live without regrets. The problem is, however, we’ve made ourselves believe we can.
So rather than change, we say to ourselves and one another, “Well, that’s just the way it is!” Or, “That’s life! Ha Ha,” and we walk on.
We make a feeble attempt to be morally responsible human beings, and then we return to saluting our flags of prejudices and divisions. We omit our moral failures and make them mainstream as if that is the way life should be.
We divide ourselves nationally, politically, by race, creed, color, and even gender, and then we turn to the religions that willingly create for us our very own God to favor and bless us, and it is to them that we run for salvation RATHER THAN OUR CREATOR.
As an ancient writer of Proverbs once said: “There are none righteous, no, not one.”
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