Men heap together the
mistakes of their lives and create a monster they call destiny. John Hobbes
One of the more common ways we have for avoiding painful truths and important
life lessons is to baptize our idiocies in the waters of spirituality: This is what God (the gods, fate, the
universe) wanted, What God willed, or some such drivel. Rather than
acknowledging that our hearts and heads chose the wrong path and that we acted
deplorably, we reframe the behavior in terms of providence or fate:
"I know I bowed to Sauron, Voldemort, and Beelzebub, but look what happened. It was meant to be. It's all goooood!"
"Sure, I knifed you in the back, but are you seeing the good that has happened since then?"
Denial may place a hard enough veneer to cover the damage our behavior incurred and leave us feeling "all good," but what lies underneath is an infection that rots the soul. This is not to say that forgiveness and healing cannot turn caca into gold, only that it will not happen until we own the caca as caca. But we don't. We slither and slide around the edges, offering a "sorry" here, a "my bad" there, or an "if I hurt you" over there, showing just enough sorrow so as to tell ourselves and others, "Hey, I said I was sorry. And anyway, can't you see all the great stuff that has come of this?"
"I know I bowed to Sauron, Voldemort, and Beelzebub, but look what happened. It was meant to be. It's all goooood!"
"Sure, I knifed you in the back, but are you seeing the good that has happened since then?"
Denial may place a hard enough veneer to cover the damage our behavior incurred and leave us feeling "all good," but what lies underneath is an infection that rots the soul. This is not to say that forgiveness and healing cannot turn caca into gold, only that it will not happen until we own the caca as caca. But we don't. We slither and slide around the edges, offering a "sorry" here, a "my bad" there, or an "if I hurt you" over there, showing just enough sorrow so as to tell ourselves and others, "Hey, I said I was sorry. And anyway, can't you see all the great stuff that has come of this?"
(“If I hurt you?" I am lying
here with a sucking chest wound and you have the audacity to say IF? So much
for ownership. “My bad”? My life was thrown into an abyss of pain and you act
like you merely stepped on my toes? Yeah, everyone’s caca smells but yours.)
My experience is that, sooner or later, the rotting of the soul begins manifesting itself in ways that demands our attention. All our professions that "It's all good!" are drowned out by our soul screaming, "LIAR!" We can either own our failures ("mistakes") and deal with them, or allow the monster we have been calling "destiny," to keep leading us down the path that ends in the decay and destruction of our souls.
My experience is that, sooner or later, the rotting of the soul begins manifesting itself in ways that demands our attention. All our professions that "It's all good!" are drowned out by our soul screaming, "LIAR!" We can either own our failures ("mistakes") and deal with them, or allow the monster we have been calling "destiny," to keep leading us down the path that ends in the decay and destruction of our souls.
Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2013
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