Wasted All the Way – Bad Debts, Good Intentions, and Naive Assumptions

Today I found a fully feathered chick – in the nest box of a broody hen among a dozen unhatched egg – DEAD.  Eyes pecked out.  Not the original broody hen on the eggs at the time.  I assumed the hens knew what they were doing broody.  I assumed the hens were looking out for chick life among themselves and no harm would come to the new born poulet.  I assumed I knew something that I had no reason to believe.  Feeling naive?  For sure.  Feeling stupid?  Not any more than usual as a novice farmer.  To blame?  Who else?  Stepping back, my fallacy of assumptions, good intentions, and experience with bad debtors, I seem to have built a wall which blocks my vision of reality.  Is this a bad thing?  Whether good or bad, I probably won’t shed my myopic visions of the world to save my life.

Look around me
I can see my life before me

Yesterday, I collected a debt.  Well, I collected the majority of it.  Actually, someone else, a debt collector friend, collected the partial debt for me.  The debtor confected a sweet story, believed by my friend, which had me saying that I would contact the debtor about the repayment.  Not true.  Has this happened to you?  The debtor needed something – six months ago.  The eventual debt collector referred that person to me.  I willingly became the benefactor.  But once the kindest was afforded, I unknowingly became responsible for resolving the debt.  If someone does not value your relationship, that person will not honor their debts incurred.  I learned again the lesson I should have already memorized.

Running rings around the way it used to be

Bad debts, partial payment, lost relationships scatter my past even as my experience with them has enriched my life with unintended wisdom about the way things used to be.

I am older now
I have more than what I wanted
But I wish that I had started long before I did

Early in the week, I encountered some known acquaintances who I intended to help financially.  They certainly needed it.  I could afford it.  What could go wrong?  I don’t mind a little manipulation for a good cause.  I have more than what I wanted…these people have less than they need.  I know that entry into heaven can be influenced on goodness, even though I don’t believe in heaven.  I know that the path to hell is paved with greed and selfishness, even though I don’t believe in hell.  I also now know the feeling of when I don’t want to do something.  This feeling came over me as my good intentions were being manipulated thin by the recipients of my generosity and I felt unintended responsibilities were being piled on.  Soon my financial obligation, already hundred’s of dollars, grew to double.   I sought council and found resolve.  However, the manipulation resumed the next afternoon.  I have little experience with philanthropy because for most of my life I had so little.  Now I know philanthropy’s steep slope, hard for the novice to avoid, with total abuse being the abyss.

And there’s so much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way

A friend in need is a friend indeed, so goes a proverb.  My closest friends, I always assumed, experienced my loyalty.  My old buddy benefited from my friendship on many occasions, yet on many occasions he did not fulfill his assumed commitment to me.  Didn’t show.  Didn’t call.  Didn’t answer the phone, text, or email.  Didn’t care.  My old work colleague of nearly twenty years wore his lack of reciprocity with honor.  He never returned a favor.  Never repaid a debt.  Never spoke well of me to others in person or behind my back.  My old best friend could call me at any time and for any reason and I would be there for him.  This would be true of him toward me when I was in need.  Until the last five years or more.  Just when I needed help most, he did not show.  He did not respond to his own commitment to come over when I flooded this spring and I lost everything.

So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away

I secretly estranged myself from my-former-best-friend way before the flood.  I’ll say that life caused him to become loony and lost.  My contacts with him were to sit while he worked on his “zingers” to sling at me.  My widely spaced visits to his house were merely welfare checks, the best part – leaving.  The contagious insanity in that monstrous house infected my inoffensive demeanor.  Now, I got rid of him (from my conscious life) but he still haunts my unconscious.   Unaware he lost a loyal old friend – in the depths and tangles of his new found insanity.

Oh, when you were young
Did you question all the answers
Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve

As a young one leaving home, I realized something wasn’t right.  I knew I had to get out of that place to find the answers.  I got out but I didn’t find any answers.  I found more questions.  More pain.  But at least I was living in reality if not acknowledging it.  I envied many but found, eventually, that they were also full of unanswered questions about relationships, desire, and flaws in human nature.  I realize that I must state what I want.  But with age, the sand runs faster and the formula for life seems buried.  With regard to human nature, I now give people reduced expectation.  With my own myopia, I must cut through the myth mist.  Be more realistic.

Look around you now
You must go for what you wanted
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved

I remember what House MD had to say about “deserve”:  “People don’t get what they deserve.  They just get what they get.  There’s nothing any of us can do about it.”  I left home but I never wanted anything but out.  I probably thought I deserved something. I didn’t know what it was.  I certainly didn’t get it.  However, now I have much.  In the form of my children and grandchildren. Those who had much back then, have much less here and now.  My family doesn’t cringe when I approach.  I don’t fabricate the past to justify the present.  I don’t explain a lifetime doing honest work for felonious clients.  I didn’t expose family to felons (or their future felonious ferals) on vacations.  I didn’t hook up with a female felon for future years.  I didn’t get what I deserve but the one’s who got the good stuff early and through stealth,  get other stuff late and through just deserts.

So much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away

I waste no time trying to change the past.   Yes, most of my years were spent in fear, isolation, and sadness.  No, I don’t have the power to change any of that.  I wasted time but now it’s over.  My life being over blesses someone who never comprehended my purpose anyway.  Life flows like water under the bridge.  I’ll never get back what I allowed to be taken from me or what I have freely given away.  Bad debts, good intentions, and naive assumptions litter everyone’s path.  Better to let them be carried away than bitter to sit beside them.

Wasted on the Way – Crosby, Stills & Nash