A friend I’ve known for twenty-plus years shared with me his disgruntlement with the actions of a close relative. As a result, there was an important event coming up in the relative’s life that this person was considering not attending. I asked him the question, “What will she remember five years from now, that you were there or not there? Will she remember the problem you had with her at the time, oir will she remember your presence on an important day in her life?”
Most of us are impacted by the short-sighted decisions we make that cause long-term grief. In the heat and emotion of the moment, words are said that cause years and years of pain. Or the attractiveness of a situation causes us to disregard the red flags that are waving in the background.
It’s too bad that we don’t live life with a rewind button that could back up the time to pre-dumbness. Or maybe have one of those five-second recall switches that would allow us to do a retake, kinda like a math test do-over. There’s been a few miserably memorable utterances I’ve made that I wish I could do-over. Like when I called one of the fifth-grade teachers at my elementary school “an old bag” in an effort to impress my friend. Soon after, Mr. Morton made an impression on my behind that brought warmtyh to the situation that lasted a lot longer than my two seconds of lunacy. It was like having an excessive amount of Bio-Freeze applied to my britches!
More accurately, our short-sighted solutions to our situations is more problem-creating. It brings to the surface the importance of having people around us who can see the consequences that we have become blind to, friends who are wise and care for our wellbeing.
Dealing with young adolescents, I see the impact that short-sighted decisions have, but also how friends who don’t have a lick of sense can add to the pain of those decisions. After all, they are middle school students. Sometimes, all it takes it for one goat to jump into the pit and all the others follow. I needed a couple of goats who stopped at the edge and said, “Hey! Let’s think about this for a moment.”
I think of some of the commercials on TV that try to make sports gambling look fashionable and, as we used to say, “hip.” In a time when debt is out of control, there was more money gambled last year than ever before. Short-sighted visions of riches almost always leads to long-term despair.
Back to my friend, I’m waiting to hear what he decided to do. Hopefully, he surrendered to a few moments of uncomfortableness to nurture a vital relationship. If not, I may have a few more conversations in the near future about consequences and healing a fractured relationship.