WE ARE ALL TAKING A DIFFERENT TEST

QUESTION: What comes at the end of a sentence?

MY ANSWER: An appeal.

First Day in State Prison (after 9 months in County Jail)

When you are obligated to disclose, at times, that you are a convicted felon people have a tendency to raise their eyebrows and politely, or otherwise, “distance” themselves from you socially or professionally.  I think it’s just easier to put people in a neat little box and keep them there, never allowing them to change and grow.  You can call it categorizing or stereotyping but to me it’s all the same.  It’s following the path of least resistance because it takes no effort to exercise empathy, compassion or attempt to look beyond the surface of their circumstances. 

On the other hand, I don’t believe in the absolute translation of  “Judge not, that ye be not judged”.  It is absolutely imperative that we all “judge” to some extent.  It is for our own survival and the safety of those we love.  We must judge many times a day what we consider to be right or wrong.  Our decisions and subsequent behavior is based on our own personal verdict. 

I prefer the translation of; “Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged; but judge righteous judgment.” This type of judgment is not a foolish or hasty stereotypical judgment. A wise friend once told me it is best to be “Wise as an owl, yet gentle as a lamb.”

I learned after over 6 years in State Prison that there are many good people locked up. There are also many people I feel should never get out. We were all there based on somebody else’s judgment of our behavior, be it jury or secular judge. Some have permanent chemical imbalances; some were temporarily chemically imbalanced; some are just wired for criminal behavior, and some just had ONE really bad day.  All of my poor choices were made while temporarily chemically imbalanced due to my own selfishness.  Once the fog of addiction began to lift, I was able to see more clearly that what got me there was not my natural or default persona.

STORY TIME:  I was sitting with a group of fine, upstanding fellows in my “Gated Community” discussing various topics of life and life incarcerated.  A certain inmate, suffering from severe narcissism, spoke up with a rather copious amount of “righteous indignation” and arrogantly stated, “I have never done a single drug in my entire life.  You guys are here because you’re a bunch of drug addicts.” Oh, how easy it is to justify yourself by comparing yourself to others. This is a dangerous position to take, especially when you are all in the same place, wearing the same clothes, within the same walls. My response to him was direct and framed off of his own pretentious statement. “So, what you’re telling us is that WE are here because we demonstrated poor, unlawful behavior while our brains were chemically altered.  YOU, on the other hand, are here because you demonstrated poor, unlawful behavior while stone cold sober. Which one of us is the real criminal?”

First Day Out!

The simple fact is that we are all here on earth.  We are all supposed to deal with life and the trials that accompany it.  Tragedy, heartache, sadness, joy, and success are disbursed to all, however, not equally.  Remember this before you judge someone: WE ARE ALL TAKING A DIFFERENT TEST! We are all unique individuals with different tendencies, propensities, strengths, and weaknesses.  Problems arise when we start to grade somebody else’s paper. We place our expectations of them on their trials not knowing the complete chemical and internal makeup of the individual. Oh, we think we do. We feel we have all the necessary information to judge or condemn. For me, the only one who has ALL of the information, thus the right to grade our tests in life is our Father in Heaven.  HE knows us completely.  No mortal possesses all the variables factored into our judgment.  Would you place an Olympic athlete and a Special Olympic athlete in the same 100m race and declare one the “winner” and one the “loser?”  They both did their best with what they were given. What is expected of them in the SAME RACE is vastly different. Thus, it should be with our own trials of addiction, divorce, death, mourning, depression, anger…the list is endless. We can help our brothers and sisters by uplifting and helping them achieve their “best effort”.

Not all trials in life are to be overcome decisively and triumphantly; conquering our tribulation, then celebrating on the shoulders of our friends and family to the sounds of cheering and a ticker-tape parade.

The hard truth in life is that some trials were placed in our lives for us to merely survive.  Broken, beaten, fatigued, bloody, alone…but alive. Just getting through it.  We are scored simply as a PASS or FAIL.  As Gordon B. Hinckley stated, “We only fail when we STOP TRYING!”