All my life I have never been one to really ask for anything. Still to this day I have a hard time asking my parents for money. I don't care if I have to eat peanut butter and dry pasta for weeks, I will not ask my parents for anything. Even with my friends, it is very hard for me to ask them for anything. I suppose that would mean that pride is my deadly sin, everyone has one. Yet, with this post I hope to break my pride and ask for one thing, forgiveness.
When I was growing up as a child, pardon the language, I was an asshole. My father would always ask me to do something with him, bonding things, and yet I always denied it. I would say something like, "No Dad, that's lame. I will never need to use that in life". I could see it in his eyes, the sadness I brought upon him. All he wanted to do was spend time with his child and actually get to know me, yet I blocked him at every chance. Stupid. That's what I was. I was an immature boy who thought only of himself and never of others. I know I should not blame myself for this, seeing as I was still maturing to my current state at the time, but I still feel guilty for it. I love my father more than anything in this world, yet I can't seem to tell him this to his face. It's not just him though, there are others.
My mother is one of the more inspirational people in my life. She is an amazing woman. I care not to go into details over this, just know she has been through hell in her life. I admire her for her ability to always walk through the flames of life with a positive attitude. Again though, as a child I would always try and test her. See how far I could push her before that positive attitude would break. The most memorable time that stands out in my mind was my sister's funeral. My whole family was broken by this tragedy. What did I do? Nothing. I acted as if nothing had happened. I cried once through the whole process, and that's only because the emotion became too unbearable. My mother's reaction? She thanked me for crying, for showing my true emotion. She thanked me after I had basically spat in the face of my sister's funeral. She showed me forgiveness. The true sense of the word.
I know I am not a perfect person. Anyone who knows me can obviously say that. It's just actually hard to admit to that fact. We, as humans, are not perfect beings. We may think that we are at times, yet the truth will always bring us back down to earth. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I just want forgiveness. I am sorry for all of the wrongs that I have done to various people throughout my life. No matter how trivial or small they may have seemed. Life truly is hard enough, who am I to make it harder? I think one thing we don't realize, until it is too late, is that life is fragile and short. We should make our decisions count. Next time someone asks you to hang out or do some mundane event, go along with it. In your eyes it may seem mundane and wasteful, but to them it may mean the world. I can't go back and relive my life, go back and spend more time with my father, yet maybe you are reading this and have not passed up your chance. That's all I can say on this subject. Take care.
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3 comments:
I can't agree more. If I could go back and do things with my father, instead of saying no, and going back to my books or whatever held my interest at the time, I would.
Speaking of possibly mundane things, how's about camping on South Mountain in October?
I'm glad to see you've matured so much in the short time you've been here. You're one of the best friends I've had in my life, and if there was ever one thing I worried about, it was this. You really showed everyone that you aren't just some senseless asshole doing random things to piss everyone off. I'm proud of you Dale.
-Z
I think if you connect this with your later repeated reports on humanity's innate 'evil' you might find a wondrous connection which shows how evil is still a neutral description, a part of nature. Although I guess really evil could be the rejection of that nature, and then that nature's natural response to that impulse, which can sometimes fall into a positive feedback loop. Regardless, the reason we should be kind to each other and not stingy is because, as you said, life is hard, and who are we to make it harder?
I think that once we have been in the hanged man's shoes, we gain a new understanding of what we are doing when we are the ones doing the hanging. It really sobers one, as it's easy to get caught up in the glee of the torches and yelling, but, again, the sun will still rise as it always has, and the moon will still follow that, and so on and so on. Then, they will end, and as with everything else, in a stepped nature, after a brief period of rest, they will return once more - hopefully a little more improved in some way than the last.
In the end we are a force of nature, just as everything else. Highways work great as long as you drive according to the rules everyone agrees upon - watch how the real speed limit is dynamic with the traffic, how people dodge in and out (you and I) like small insects or electrons beaming down a tube - interacting with the other entities/cars. It's like watching ants or some other form of nature from varying angles. If you intentionally swerve over, you interrupt this flow and cause unthinkable things to happen further down the road (12 car pileup, one of which was a pregnant woman, one was a man just back from overseas going to see family, two were children, one had to lose both legs and was a marathon runner who now has no way to live, one is perfectly fine but now suffers from latent post traumatic stress - only to be reawakened at another time, possibly starting another similar wreck, which could then go on ad naseum.
I'm just going to stop there as I have a lot of other post's tabs open, but I hope this is some food for thought for ya!
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