Monday, July 27, 2015

LEGACY



"THERE ARE THREE CONSTANTS
IN LIFE...CHANGE, CHOICE,
AND PRINCIPLES".
                                                       Stephen Covey

     Seems the older I get, the more sentimental I get.  Sometimes you wonder how when you are gone, you will be remembered.  After someone met an old flame of mine I was asked if I ever wondered how life would be if I had gone down a different path.  My answer had to be yes.  But when the truth is known, there are regrets in every decision you make.  And there are also reasons not to dwell on them.
      Some believe in fate or that there is a path you are destined to take.  Yet if you believe that then you do not accept that the creator gives us all free choice.  It is by our own choosing how we deal with the good, the bad, the tragic, and the joyful.
     Just as we are all unique in our DNA, fingerprints, and countless other ways, we are unique in what we choose to do at any given moment.  And we must live with the results. 
     So many are so tied up in their beliefs, prejudices, judgments, and self intellect that the simplest kindness or indulgence seems to be beyond them.  There are times in movies that some author manages to put into a story and the director of a film managed to keep the essence, that it should have an impact on how things should be in real life.
     Now I am not one that spend his life in a movie theater or buys the story lines that most movies send out.  Imagination and originality are dead in Hollywood.  But once in a while there are rare moments that something actually comes through that is truthful and provocative.
     I ran across some clips from a film I saw a long time ago called GOOD OLD BOYS.  It was Tommy Lee Jones first directing job.  As an actor I am a big fan.  As a director I don't understand most of what he puts on the screen.  Good Old Boys was I think his best.
      One scene that catches my attention is a funeral where the preacher does not know much, or think much of the man, he is burying.  And the Character played by Tommy Lee speaks up and in a cowhands way speaks of the things that should be remembered about the man.  Not the perceived opinions of those who only knew him towards the end.
     It shows that what the person did before there were the conditions and lifestyles that these people live really mattered.  That without a man like him they would not be there and living in the manner that they do.  Any person must be judged against the time frame that they lived.  Trying to be judgmental of a life framed in the present loses the contribution that that life was responsible for.
     Understanding another is not a criteria for looking down on that life contrasted by the times.  To be condescending and judgmental is not what we are to reflect in our lives.  It is each person to live according to what is right and good and let the judgment lay in the realm of the final judge.
     This does not mean that our life must be a free for all as by what we want to do.  There is an eternal set of rules that we must strive to live by. Each of us is given freedom of choice.  If we regret the choices we made in life we must do what it takes to steer a course toward the ultimate end.
      However if we allow choices in the past to cause us to long for a different path it is a futile wish.  I look at what I would not have now.  Things can always be worse and would I give up where I am and who I know today for a do over?  I don't think so.  It is too easy to wallow in self regret.
     The character Hewey Caloway hit close to home.  It is a rare thing for a movie to entertain and make a person think as well.  If you ever get the chance to see THE GOOD OLD BOYS I would recommend it.

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