I Met Grace in a Ditch - An Essay on Perspective in a Paradise of Liars

Nearly one year ago I wrote the piece entitled I Met Grace in a Ditch - An Essay on Perspective in a Paradise of Liars. It's a commentary pointed at a series of moral downfalls that occurred in the Winter and Spring of 2010. These downfalls were sad and disappointing and came from a smattering of people too selfish to employ love. But the funny thing was that nearly all of these people thought they were loving appropriately, that their self-involved actions were misunderstood.


Let me be clear. There was no misunderstanding.


I'm a fair person. I listen well. I'm an intelligent empath. I often sing other people's anthems long before they discover their own voices. It's what I do. I'm not perfect at it, but I show some talent in this regard. With that said, it remains clear that I was right about the selfishness I saw one year ago (even with a healthy dose of stepping in others' shoes). I was right to veto people from my life who cared for no more than their own limbic desires; they were a slave to them and some of these folks still are.


And that's the sad thing . . . some of them are STILL stuck in a dark closet without a light to show them their shortcomings. They are too staunch to open their eyes to the advent of solid morals; they would rather just do things their own way. And I should be clear - there is nothing wrong with doing things your own way as long as YOU DON'T DO IT AT THE EXPENSE OF ANOTHER PERSON'S FEELINGS. And this is where, in my mind, many people lose their way; they forget the plight and care of others.


Self-preservation is a valid and very strong force, but it should never take precedence over the feelings of reasonable people. And I realize each of us has slightly different definitions of "reasonable," but that word will have to do for the sake of argument - and, besides, I think you know what I mean.


The moment when self-preservation exceeds the reasonable needs of others is the moment when it turns into ugly selfishness.


I wrote the following piece about this exact topic, but you should derive from it your own meaning . . .

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I Met Grace in a Ditch - An Essay on Perspective in a Paradise of Liars

Some of us get stuck in a dark closet.

My mother once told a story about me in a ditch. She had come to the living room window and peered out. She saw me. A simple boy really. I sat there quietly . . . in a ditch, which separated our front yard from the street. My elbows rested on my bent knees and I had my chin cupped in my hands. My mother saw me thinking. 

I want to go back to that ditch now. I'll be damned if I don't miss that ditch.

And so now I am thinking again. Finally . . . I have a few hours of awake time to tend to the frenetic thoughts in my head, to make sense of my most recent weeks. You see, I am troubled. My thoughts have been forced to reckon with the cowardice of people.

Sitting at my computer, I look to my dark closet for some reason. I will be the first to admit that, several times over, I have seen myself crouching in the corner of a closet with my knees pressed to my chest and shaking with fear, ignorance and insecurity. Oh what a terrible place for anyone to be! And in this closet I have often found myself quiet, unable to see the transparency of things, unwilling to disclose what I know to be my truths. I am embarrassed to admit I have lied to myself and to others on occasion so as to escape difficulty . . . but wisdom eventually shows me such circumvention is only temporary.

So you see, I am no deliberate saint . . . I am no constant titan of bravery. My courage has sometimes been circumstantial and even accidental. 

In recent weeks, I have witnessed far too many people hiding themselves away, crouching in their own dark closets. Some of them don't even know they sit in darkness. It hurts my heart something awful to see them there, to make such heroic efforts to pull them out into the light - and to fail. I realize, in many cases, it is not even my place to help.

People are, oftentimes, the makers of their own darkness. And yet, they can be the makers of their own light as well.

The way I see it, and I often forget this, perspective is the only medium through which people can come to light. But how do you offer perspective to the sufferers of constant cowardice, to the plethora of people stuck in a paradise of liars? I suppose you do it with love, which is the best answer I can come up with in this moment. The problem is that love comes in so many forms. It remains difficult to know the proper application of love in each situation. It can take the shape of walking directly into the darkness to rescue our lost, blind friends. Conversely, it can be the act of walking away from our loved ones, leaving them to confront their darkness alone.

For guidance, my version of love considers dark perspective. When I walk to my kitchen sink with a clean glass to fetch some water, I think of someone bending their head to drink from a polluted river. If I reach home safely on my bike, I am reminded of the sound of my body colliding with the hood of a car. If I walk a flight of stairs, I can't help but think of a soldier who has only one leg or even none at all. When I am relaxing in a park, enjoying wine and cheese with the love of my life, I recall all the broken-hearted moments when I collapsed to some random floor, crying and convulsing to the point of snot. If I'm holding a smiling baby who smells of pure sweetness, I think of how my hands were sweating on the handles of my aunt's coffin when I carried her to her grave. 

These . . . are my daily thoughts.

Some say I am too dark, that my thoughts go too far and are unnecessary. And to them I say - I appreciate life too much to forget the terror that brought me to a better understanding of love.

And now, thinking of these past weeks and seeing so much weakness in people, I can only hope my courage will not falter in times of need, that I am creative enough to find the correct application of love.


I will definitely make mistakes.

I think I met grace in a ditch. Where is my ditch? I must ponder this some more . . .