okay

“Sometimes you just gotta say, it’s okay because I’m doing it”
He said it and I blinked. And I laughed. We weren’t talking about us. I mean, either of us and our various on goings. We were talking about a friend and his lady friends and his sharp learning curve in the education of the slippery slope of conscience that comes with being a player. A Playah.
So I let the comment go.

Oh, but I didn’t. I think of it now and again. I’m thinking of it right now. Every once in a while someone makes a definitive statement that pinpoints a certain philosophy you KNOW is theirs, really, truly, a basis of how and where they live. And every once in a while a friend or relative utters something to that tune that is so completely different from my own beliefs that I am floored by how very much I disagree with it.
And so I try to let it go as variance of personality and yet I can’t help but to ruminate on this core difference.

“It’s okay because I’m doing it”
Now, see, you weren’t there to hear the tone, the context so I’ll make more clear “It must be okay, because I’m okay with doing it” or “my doing it implicitly makes it just fine”
I wonder at this. This sort of squishy standard. Because, by this standard you can’t make a mistake. By this standard, well, it’s all good.
Wow, how lucky. How fortunate for you to be able to make everything right by the very presence of your actions.

How do you ever learn and grow with a philosophy like that?

And I stop and I think, maybe it’s important to sometimes, just sometimes, see yourself as the bad guy. To allow yourself to see the places where YOU were the jerk, where YOU fucked up, where YOU were not okay, where you were wrong, just wrong, and should make an effort to make it right.
I mean, yeah, that’s hard. And it needn’t involve some sort of self flagellation, a ritual inner beating every time you cop to a mistake. But if you walk through the world being right all the time a whole lot of other people are going to have to be wrong, aren’t they?
And if no one is ever right or wrong, and it’s all just fine, then how do we explain and change and try to right and preempt the pain and frustrations we unnecessarily inflict on those we love?
Can we love at all if we can’t take a certain amount of responsibility to the darker side of our actions? If we can’t ask ourselves “I did this, is this really okay?” or more to the point “Is this okay? And can I Do it and fee okay about myself?”