At some point or another we all feel fragile.
Something or someone touches our heart as they pass by in this life and it strikes us just so.
And we've all felt insignificant a time or two.
Especially in my line of work where they make you think all you have to be is breathing.
Well, between that and the inmates never change, they're always the same and every time we lose one, we get a bus full to replace them.
We are all fragile beings.
And in our professional setting, we may feel insignificant, but personally, we're not.
Example: A man starts dating a girl, who, because she has problems showing emotion, starts doing something illegal. From there she gets arrested and put on probation. He breaks up with her, for whatever reason, and she goes back to the bad stuff to cope. She gets arrested again and goes to prison. Her kids grow up with their wife-beating father, not knowing their mother, and turn out to get both the wife-beating, and the illegal activity, because that's what they know from their parents. Eventually, they will both, ultimately end up in prison, and I will have to supervise them.
Now it stands to reason that these kids would have never gone to prison had the man never dated this woman.
Lets take it a step farther, since the kids grew up in an abusive home, one of them flips out and beats the hell out of me on the yard.
NOW it stands to reason I wouldn't have gotten a (probably well deserved for some of the things I've done) beat down, had the man and woman never met.
The consequences of ones actions can be monumental, and stretch far beyond the here and now.
On July 4th, a friend that I went to high school with died in an auto accident.
Someone had taken the keys and he, somehow, got them back.
I didn't even know.
On one hand, I haven't gone to a puking rally in a REALLY long time, so of course, I wasn't invited to this one.
I guess that's part of growing up and maturing faster than other people, you don't get invited out much.
So not being invited, I didn't make him go, I didn't put the cup to his lips and make him drink, I didn't give his keys back to him, and I didn't watch as he drove away inebriated that night.
But when I heard about it (the day of the funeral)(that's how much I'm out of the loop with the high school guys) and went to the funeral, as I stood there with my dark sunglasses on, looking more like a meat head among a crowd full of them, I heard them laugh and tell stories, but I wept.
I didn't get him drunk, didn't make him drive, but maybe I did.
Maybe, if I would have been more neanderthal in my younger years, I would have been invited, could have been much more sober, and drove him home if he wanted to go that bad.
In a roundabout way, I could have saved him.
Then again, he could have saved himself.
He could have skipped the party, or passed out there, or someone else could have stopped him.
No matter what, it's amazing how fragile life is, but how insignificant it's not, and how one thing different might change it all.
So be careful of your choices.
The life you save, could be your own.
We're gonna have Brandon S. and Ozzy Osbourne play us out of here.
Give both of these a listen.
Especially Brandon S., I'm really diggin this song right now.
V.V.
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2 comments:
So what if instead, the man and woman never met and instead of hooking up with him for whatever brief and enjoyable time meets up with the like of Dennis Rader (the BTK killer) or one of his ilk and her body ends up rotting and lost stuffed in a plastic drum in an abandoned basement somewhere. Her children never have any closure and often wonder if their mother just abandoned them and they both grow up angry and depressed and eventually commit suicide. Who is responsible for that? Surely not you. Each person crafts their own fate, consciously or not. And nothing anyone can do will change it. From my point of view.. the woman was already emotionally crippled and dependent and would have ended up where she was no matter who she was with. No matter who. And your friend probably would have ended up the same way, since he had never matured enough to know when to stop. Maybe if someone had taken his keys and kept them that night, the next night he would have taken out a bus full of kids. You can only do so much. Even superman couldn't save the world all the time. And you aint him.
990!
996!
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