MOST times we accept the hearsay of what a friend reports, or the adverse, loud declaration of, “That is what I hear, and know.” We are thus inclined to act within the extreme. We repress the possibility of any inclined truth of any incident if we cannot place it into the quest of enquiry before guilt is confirmed and the emotions demand retribution, where such may not be justified.
I have known friends who fell for the I-see assurance of others and acted, destroying their lives on the accusation, and in one dismal case inflicting serious harm to an innocent. Some incidents and assertions do bring harm that cannot be corrected. For some reason not yet analysed, we have sunk into a realm of domestic suspicion that leaves no path for reason or second thought, where violence explodes into an earthquake that consumes, tearing down the walls of alternatives, and all is lost to the harsh, consuming report of suspicion that devours, leaving the innocent to endure in a world that hardly cares.
I had a long chat with someone I know. At the conclusion, he suggested to me what a friend had offered to him as an alternative: to block his mind and emotions, to use “drugs or alcohol to soothe his domestic peeves.” I insisted that those two were the worst possible alternatives. I explained using my own child as an example. I elaborated, using the condition of my own child as an example. I queried whether there were other ideas, even past industrial hobbies he may have toyed with, and circumstances that may point into the immediate that presented as earning capable and could allow a more rational perception. There were, but the problem was what I faced at his age: even if it’s a workshop, where were the tools going to come from?
This is where I was even younger than he was; I did whatever was practical to learn. Drugs and alcohol were gestures into a bottomless pit. I told him what I endured as a parent, and was a young male child taken out of school years ago so the only parent—they were separated—could go to work. There’s this feeling that males could always find employment. Those days are gone, but some folk are stuck in the imaginations of yesteryear, and you can’t build your dreams on fantasies.
Today, any field you need to explore, you either need to have been born with the talent and be paying attention to how it works, or, if it’s a trade, then you need to have tutoring or experience, or the tools, and some practical experience through work or trade books. Thus, some tutoring is required, but drugs nor liquor are not going to get the ball rolling in any justified beginning. Even though we parted in an agreeable mood, I do hope he was listening and that he had heard.
