Unforgettable Mistakes
Poor Choices Define Us, Smart Choices Go Unmarked
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Optimists think newspapers exist to inform us. Cynics think they exist to allow advertisers access to our discerning eyeballs. They’re both wrong. The primary purpose of a newspaper is to remind us that life is woefully, wickedly unfair. And to bring us Sudoku.
I read a story in this very paper not long ago that verified life’s injustice: A young woman was boozing at a local watering hole when some barflies began bothering her and she decided to drive home. She was drunk, and planned to find a spot where she could park and sleep it off. But that’s not what happened.
Starshine Roshell
In the haze of drink, in the dark of night, she made a bad decision. She pulled onto the road and slammed head-on into another car, killing its driver―an innocent wife and mother.
It was horrendously unfair, criminally so. The young woman who caused the accident will pay $1 million in damages and spend at least a dozen years in jail. And after she has done those things, she’ll spend her life reliving the moment she screwed up, wishing she could do it over, do it differently. Her egregious error will define her forever.
Is that fair? Probably.
But it got me thinking: It’s so easy to pinpoint the wretched mistakes we make in life―and so hard to know what exactly we’ve done right. The results of poor decisions haunt us tangibly, in injury or shame or loss; but the results of smart choices, prudent choices, go largely unmarked.
It’s impossible to know, for example, how many lives are spared when we don’t drive home drunk. When we opt not to order another round. Or choose to call a cab. It’s impossible to measure the success of responsible behavior; and equally impossible to ignore the flagrant results of recklessness.
So much of the feedback we get in life―and I mean direct, A+B=C feedback, not promotions or diplomas or anniversary cards―is spurred by missteps. We give in to a hot fling, we pay for it in marital damage, despite the years of fidelity that preceded it. We call our boss an ass clown, we feel the sting of lost wages and the drudge of job-hunting, regardless of how many mornings we dragged ourselves into work with a smile.
Since “bad” choices like texting while driving or taking shortcuts down dark alleys can have pronounced, life-altering results while “good” decisions like wearing a helmet and eating your vegetables merely allow us to (yawn) maintain the status quo, life is quick to floodlight our mistakes, and decades-slow to reveal our successes. Which is un-flipping-fair.
If we must bear the burden of our jumbo blunders, why can’t we revel in the rapture of our not infrequent right-ness? Okay, so we can’t look into an alternate, Bizarro-Scrooge future and see the happy results of the many smart choices we make on a daily basis. (Ah, there’s Tiny Tim! He’s alive because we decided at the last minute not to plow through that yellow light after all!) But what we can do is take more credit for the good calls we make.
Today, for example, I removed a vitamin from the counter where the dog could have reached it. I remembered to turn off the coffee pot before leaving the house. I waited till I got to a stop sign to futz with my iPod. And I told my son not to climb up the pantry shelves.
Heroic? Hardly. Just a few niggling “rights” undertaken to stave off those dreaded life-defining “wrongs.” Just a small inventory of the day’s quiet victories to balance the louder, and inevitable, screw-ups of my life.
And that―if nothing else―is fair.
Starshine Roshell is the author of Keep Your Skirt On.
Comments
Amen.
DougL (anonymous profile)
March 24, 2010 at 7:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Nice thoughts. We are often much too hard on ourselves. Because of this article, I'm going to make a point of being kinder to myself today-at least for a minute!
edukder (anonymous profile)
March 24, 2010 at 8:24 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Good points raised by Starshine, and I want to add to what she is saying.
It's easy to focus upon the individual who drinks and drives--or for that matter engages in other wrongful behavior, but equally important is to look to the causes of the attitude behind this behavior.
The aftermath of The Holocaust raised questions about the collective responsibility of society in light of the commonly-heard "I was only acting under orders" defense of those who participated in this dark period of history.
We can apply this to any situation where a cultural attitude tacitly approves unethical behavior. Look at our own culture which preaches about the evils of drug abuse and smoking, but talks out the other side of its collective mouth about drinking and driving: yes that is not a misprint, I mean drinking AND driving.
We hear about "don't drink and drive" yet anytime someone consumes alcohol and gets behind the wheel it's drinking and driving. When city leaders give the go ahead for yet another bar, they are part of the problem.
When you have "wine bars" in Solvang serving people to the point of "total intoxication" (to quote one of the people working in one of those places) and moreover some of these bars have found a legal loophole to serve alcohol to customers who are allowed to bring their children into these bars (on one of them there is a sign saying "pets and kids welcome) is it any wonder drunk driving is a problem which ruins the lives of all involved?
Name me one city, county, or state leader who has come out and condemned all of this.
As some of you have learned from my previous posts my dad was hit and nearly killed by a man who had a 0.069 blood alcohol reading which is .11 below the legal limit. The court determined alcohol played a role in the crash. Second point: people can think they are sober and be well over the legal limit. Third point: one can appear sober and be over the legal limit. Finally, factors such as fatigue and how much one has had to eat can affect how one reacts to alcohol.
In closing, there is a big "gray area" between the 0.069 reading (which is probably about the reading that many people leaving social events where booze is served are running) and the point where people are visibly drunk. My answer to this is simply not to serve alcohol to people who come to my house, and to educate people by exposing the myth of "responsible drinking". I'm sure the man who hit my dad never expected what happened to happen, what makes anyone else think this wouldn't apply to them?
Meanwhile, our elected leaders remain silent while more bars are allowed to profit from playing Russian Roulette with our lives.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
March 24, 2010 at 9:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I always wear a helmet while eating my vegetables. It has saved me, more than once, from combative brussel sprouts!
niceFLguy (anonymous profile)
March 25, 2010 at 8:14 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Since we are going to ban drinking establishments, can we add cell phone retailers, too? Since my friend was struck by a motorist, who was distracted by the use of her cell phone, let's remove these establishments of utterly reckless wares and further protect the citizens of this great country.
brimo7272 (anonymous profile)
March 26, 2010 at 4:59 p.m. (Suggest removal)