I Did It My Way

"I'm sorry to be so long in writing. I've been so sick that all I've been able to do is go to work and to bed. I haven't heard from my children in many weeks and don't know how they're doing, but I pray that they're OK. I often think of all the wealth I once had in my wife and children, and it makes me sad that things aren't the way that they were. Nevertheless, I'm grateful for the years that I was a part of their lives."

This is an excerpt of a letter that I received, and from it you can easily glean a few things about the writer. He obviously misses a family that is seldom in touch with him and dreams of better days when they were all together. And even amidst the overtones of regret for having lost what he now knows was a great treasure, there is a spark of genuine gratefulness for what they did have.

Why, you might wonder, doesn't he just take the initiative to contact them and work through the broken relationships and bind up the hurts? From his letter, he would like nothing better, but it's just not so simple. He's in prison.

While there are certainly differences of degree, the attitude that motivated his crimes are really not much different from those that so many of us exhibit every day. Don't I want to do things my way, to have others play by my rules, to be able to make MY own decisions? Only a slight extension of such a "me-oriented" mindset can quite naturally lead to all sorts of unthinkable circumstances.

Was "doing it his way" worth it to the letter writer? At one time, perhaps he thought so. I surmise that he simply followed his natural inclinations and the instincts of machoism ... and one thing led to another. Others were hurt, and he lost far more than his physical freedom. Even tears of regret can't restore what was so quickly destroyed by "doing it his way."

Admittedly, his circumstances are extreme, but they seem to be occurring with increasing regularity -- even in the home -- as more and more people demand to "have it their way." Still, countless opportunities arise for us to defer to other and limit our own rights in order to preserve peace, harmony, and relationships.

Is it worth insisting that we be able to dictate the terms to which others must kowtow? There's often a price involved ... perhaps too great a price. And though rude and aggressive behavior may not necessarily put us behind literal bars, the consequences can be just as confining.

A proverb truly says, "A brother offended is harder to win than a walled city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle." We can easily find ourselves locked out of others' lives ... forever.

The glory in being able to say, "I did it my way" is greatly overrated.

Copyright 1998 James McAlister

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