so many scrape by
so many rely on the golden rule of who is not looking and who catches that shit you do when even you can't quite bare to look at your own hands
listen:
it doesn't take a lot to not be a terrible person
it seems to me the opportunity to be a reasonably okay human is afforded at most turns, and unless you've been lunching with the devil on regular occasions it shouldn't take much of a fight to just be fine
to scrape by as a person worthy of their own skin
so lets not even go there, lets not talk about all the terrible things you COULD do, all the intentionally horrible sins you could engage in, all the cruel and dysfunctional ways you could treat people, all the ways you could explicitly lie and cheat and commit unquestionably violent acts that would bruise and blister and scar
I am going to trust temptation seldom leads you toward such extreme levels of transgression, because odds are, if you are reading this, I know you and quite frankly I just don't want to think about it
these days I'm more concerned with the acts of inaction, of cowardice, of the grey zone of morality. of the things we do and watch other people do which are reckless or callous or dangerous, but which we let pass, because we don't want to police those we love, or because we just can't stand yet another confrontation, or because we wonder where the very fuzzy line or boundary lies between being a "good person" and being a jerk. the things we do because we are scared of the discomfort of doing the thing that could really make a difference, the thing that could make things better
it's not okay
one of the reasons we have personal relationships is to provide a mirror to our actions. if we are worth anything we choose people whose opinion we can trust and who have the cahones to tell us when we are fucking up. and while it's wise to depend on your friends for support when you DO fuck up, it's also wise to not expect them to reflect back your most insecure and inappropriate wishes instead of providing you with a real refelction of where you are really at.
and it goes both ways
when I walk up to you and ask you, a trusted friend how I look, I'm not asking for a magnifying glass, but I also I don't expect you to provide me with a funhouse mirror or a strategic blindfold
and I also don't expect you to let me leave the house with my back covered in shit because I didn't ask if I leaving a trail of excrement
part of loving people is helping them to grow
5 comments:
I'm with you. I find it ironic that often the one who speaks up against the transgressing friend is the person who is quickly ostracized. Sometimes it's hard to know when the point of no discussion has been crossed. Like the stories of the exiled friends who spoke up about the bad fiance and were shut out in the cold.
I'd also like to think that people find their own milieu - if you can't run with one crowd b/c you're too rude/forthright/uncaring/etc then you find your people, eventually. and it ain't always pretty.
man, blog self-censorship gone wild!!!
well, I didn't like some of what I had written...style, content...some was unnecessary
next thing you know the blog will post pictures of itself topless on the rollercoaster only to take it down 15 minutes later.
(note: my word verification word is "dffds")
hey, I reserve the right tro expose and conceal myself on whim
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