Swim On

    When we are born we are helpless sacks of flesh. We can do little more than poop, pee, cry and sleep. The only reasons babies aren't eaten or left in the wilderness is because humans have a natural instinct to protect the young especially infants. This translates in the way the majority of us perceive small children. We seem them as cute and adorable. We want to care for them and insure their continued survival. At the earliest stages they can do no serious harm to anything they are likely to come in contact with. They have yet to consider the concepts of good and evil. Perhaps that is why we call them innocent.



 I do not think babies are innocent. We are all animals. We have the same basic instincts. Babies  simply have very little capability, time or reason to act out in what might be considered an undesirable manner. As children grow older their capacity for destruction and the creation of problems increases. While I do not mean to say that preteen children are immoral beings their is a sort of adult kind of feeling of guilt and responsibility which at least for me did not come until the last few years.



 You see growing up is about learning what kind of person you want to be and working to make yourself that person. Sometimes you screw up. I have many times. That's when this sickening feeling of failure sinks in and you start to feel like adulthood and your future are an iceberg and you're the Titanic. It makes you wonder if you were  ever a "good" person at all.


 I do not believe in moral absolutes but I do have a personal moral standard. This is something I try to hold myself to at all times. I have never felt more guilty and full of self hatred than shortly after I drove my best friend to tears trying to get her to leave so that I could spend more alone time with a girl that was at that time my girlfriend. My friend had helped me through one of the hardest times in my life. She is like a brother to me. I was so ashamed about what I did.

Later I apologized and we are currently as close as we have ever been. The point of all this is that it's okay to mess up sometimes. You've just got to keep that idea in your head about who you want to be and to fight for it. We are no longer in our cradles with our mothers looking after us. We are being forged by our own will, society and nature into adults. To quote a wise fish "Just keep swimming." This is Matthew J. Gleason reporting to you from the wastelands.