Life is not a simple thing yet many, and by many I mean most, live their lives as a simple thing. To be brunt, people have a tendency to take the easy way out, to do what is safe, what is comfortable, what is acceptable. I'm not a lot different although I'm beginning to not like that well traveled path. I mean, the dividends are nice, the end results are OK. I've got a good life, a decent house, a nice wife, good kids, and I'm somewhat respected.
That's not enough?
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not exactly unhappy, I don't have that right. For whatever reason, I've ended up in a pretty fortunate position. While I'm sure hard work had a lot to do with where I'm at, I'm well aware luck had quite a bit to do with me and my lot. So, I am grateful!
Yet, there's something missing, something I can't quite put my finger on, something left undone. Now anyone who has ever spent time reading anything I've ever wrote, knows that in my younger years, I believed in manifest destiny, not yours, mine. That's not what this is. It's not about saving the world, the whales, feeding the poor or spreading liberalism across the land.
That sense of leaving something undone is cause for a sense of guilt I can't justify. I think it's because I took the easy way out, I took that path that lead here. I could have done more but didn't want to. I'm not going to lie about it, that's the truth.
The question is, why didn't I care? It's not that I wasn't busy working, not that I wasn't busy raising a family, not that I wasn't busy in politics, not that I wasn't busy in building my life... I certainly was.
I've done everything I was supposed to.
But see, the thing is, I've always been a radical, I've always thought in radical terms, and it turns out, I'm not even close to being a radical. I've done everything right, everything to help myself out, help my family out, but I've done very little, if anything to change anything, to make anything better.
I've kept it simple, kept it safe.
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