Embarrassment and bewilderment at how stupid you can be, is but a probable eventuality of a risk that you took which didn’t quite pay off. The shame may be temporary, but it is real enough to make you want to burrow back into your shell and never expose your soft belly again.
But life isn’t meant to be lived inside a bubble. You walk into what could possibly be pain, accept the experience and live with the consequences. It’s your choice, another name for freedom.
As you wake from sleep, you cry for the comfort of darkness that you were in just minutes before. This uncertainty and shakiness of wakefulness is what is peddled as liberation; if you feel cheated, take heart, better men than you have been lured by its siren call. Comfort lies only in slumber. To get to the other side for another kind of comfort, you must cross the barrier of pain.
Read the newspaper and your make-believe security blanket will lose a thin layer every day. Which is this place that you are living in? Hell?
Someone once said, “The ugly in people disgusts me,” to which I loftily responded from my high horse, “Nothing is ugly.” But I stand corrected. Ugly is very real. Ugly is ugly indeed, there is nothing beautiful or redeeming about it.
“Everyone does it. So I am not wrong. Don’t judge me.” (You will be judged, live with it. When you choose to do what they all do, you will also be judged as they are.)
“What about me? What about ME?” (me me me me me me me me me. You are just one miserable me in a universe of virus-me’s.)
Do what your me wants. Just remember that there are two types of consequence to every single thing that you choose to do: consequence to yourself, and consequence to others. If you know that a particular action will result in positive consequences to yourself, but negative consequences to others, would you still do it? Would you make the decision based on who these other people are or would it not matter?
What you do is who you are. So what would you do?
