Life is like a piece of notebook paper, the lines help guide you, the color represents all things start out innocent, and the weight of it signifies freedom of burdens. Often times we take for granted that piece of paper, much like our lives. We spill things on it, screw it up, and write outside the lines. How often do we keep it secure and safe from wet counters and dirty hands? Think how often you have taken a risk that did not need to be taken. Did you walk in a dark parking lot at night alone? Have you slept with your doors unlocked or windows open?
I get tired of hearing how the world isn’t like it was in the 1960s. Fact is, the 1960’s and 70’s had bad people too; serial killers, rapist, murders, mobsters – the world has not changed only evolved and with it so have criminals. These are not new phenomena; they are ancient evils that have surpassed efforts to stop them. But people are people and we will always struggle with mental stability and victimization. Just like the notebook paper our life is fragile, here this moment gone the next. So why do we take so many chances with it? Do we not feel it is laudable of protecting? Do we treat it with a pill and call it a day? Can evil be rehabilitated? So many questions so many ignorant answers.
I am not sure I totally understand the ability of the human brain, but I am sure I understand that evil lurks all around us. Waiting so patiently and preying so methodically on “the one.” The one could be you. I often have pondered if I have encountered a rapist, murderer, or child predator in my everyday errands – touched their hand, provided a hello, or a simple smile. It makes me sick because it was not deserved and their victim(s) deserved better. But I know it happens for my father is a child sex predator – I know he has had conversations with unsuspecting people, maybe even touch a child to give her a piece of candy, or opened the door for a woman whom he had thoughts of doing bad things to. I think about how he conducts his everyday life smiling and laughing with those he meets along life’s journey – he is so undeserving for what he has done in his life – but yet has not paid his dues. I feel bad for the women who saw good in him at one time – enough good to marry him. They became his victims too. They did not deserve it.
I am not comforted to think that a serial killer could have been in a parking lot watching for his next victim and may have passed me over for another. I am thankful that I think this way. I think it keeps me grounded in the real world and a tad bit paranoid. That is it, we have all become less paranoid than we should be, less vigilant than we should be, and less tuned in to the evil. In a way, we have grown to accept it. It is not normal, it should not be something we watch on the news and say, “how horrible” then go take a bubble bath with the doors unlocked!
The piece of paper, if only for a moment, will fly and take on a different shape once grasped by the hands of the wind. For a moment it will twist, turn, swirl about like a rodent being wrapped up by a snake, like a victim fighting back as their life depends on it. The paper had no choice in what it became. But for many of us that are capable, we do have a choice. Don’t let your life become the twisted piece of paper that drowns in the coffee spill or becomes destroyed by the sole of the shoe that ignores its presence on the ground. Your life is worth something now even if you felt it didn’t a time ago. Even if someone else didn’t think it meant anything a time ago. It does. You do.
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