February 7, 2007


MOMENT OF INTROSPECTION


If God can forgive me, why then can’t I forgive myself for my shortcomings?

It’s said that God will forgive most anything if the culprit will only fess up to him, and don’t do it again. Okay, I can do that, matter of fact I did do that, but I still feel uncomfortable with the memory, and these are memories that should have run into the statute of limitations as they happened more than fifty years ago, although if I’m talking about God and forgiveness then time is not measured on a calendar I don’t suppose. Okay forget that. If then I am okay with God, is it my personal conscience that won’t erase the slate?

I read everyday of people doing horrendous things to their fellow human beings and seemingly having nada in the conscience department. They’re said to be sociopaths as if that makes it all understandable. They don’t carry any baggage, yet I can’t dispose of the minutia of my conceived wrongdoings to others. I can forgive others, but I’m not too good at forgetting. Perhaps the reason I can’t forgive myself is I have a Velcro memory or conscience in certain areas, the things I want to forget and leave behind stick with me like glue. There is always an answer for my computers ill’s somewhere on the internet, then what I need is a roadmap to the answer of how to give it up and purge my conscience of the guilt of life, the minutia that is gathered by living a long time.

I saw this today and perhaps could blame old Socrates for opening up this can of peas. He said we should examine our life. I do, and I come to one conclusion that I am responsible for what I have done and further for what I think or thought.



“The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates (470-399 BCE)
belief that we must reflect upon the life we live was partly inspired by the famous phrase inscribed at the shrine of the oracle at Delphi, “Know thyself.” The key to finding value in the prophecies of the oracle was self-knowledge, not a decoder ring.
Socrates felt so passionately about the value of self-examination that he closely examined not only his own beliefs and values but those of others as well. More precisely, through his relentless questioning, he forced people to examine their own beliefs. He saw the citizens of his beloved Athens sleepwalking through life, living only for money, power, and fame, so he became famous trying to help them.


Well okay Socko, but most of us can’t stand up to a lot of that examining ourselves these days. The ethics codes of your day are certainly not the codes of today. Matter of fact, our ethics change yearly it seems, so for this exercise I think I will leave it to God to forgive and forget when I come to that moment of judgment and new life.

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