Interred With Your Bones?

In William Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony tells the crowd at Caesar’s funeral, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

I can’t think of a better classical quote than that to describe the modern obsession with social media.  Forget the obvious narcissism for a moment; think about the way Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other sites have become the means for attacking people we don’t like and even people we haven’t met.  Someone posts an ill-advised comment, joke, picture, or opinion online, somehow it spreads across the globe, and out of nowhere comes a horde of critics on social media who vilify that individual, call him or her very unsocial names, and even make threats that border on criminal.

 Author Jon Ronson addressed this phenomenon in his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Riverhead Books, copyright 2015 by Jon Ronson) documenting the cases of people who created a regrettable post and suffered the resulting public humiliation that often ended in the person losing his job and otherwise having his life ruined.  Decent people convicted by a mob.  One mistake defines their life.  One strike and they’re out.  As Ronson wrote, “[W]e’ve created a stage for constant artificial high drama.  Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or sickening villain.” (pp. 78-79).

We tend to keep our financial lives to ourselves, except for the bragging (online and elsewhere) about our purchases of fancy cars, gadgetry, houses, vacations, boats—all, by the way, probably financed by a boatload of debt.  So your worst critic in that arena may be you.  Perhaps you are racked by guilt because you made an awful financial gamble that cost you thousands of dollars.  Or failed to start saving early for retirement.  Or spent too much on a large purchase.  Or started a business that went bust.  Or took what seems to be the wrong career path.

I urge you not to let that one thing define your life.  Yes, there may be some uncomfortable financial fallout from it, but there is redemption.  The joy you or a loved one experienced through it; living a dream, even a short-lived one, through your “mistake”; creating a memory that you will always fondly cherish—these are things that even money seemingly poorly spent or even lost may still yield as dividends.  And even if you find no redeeming value in your error, it is not the total sum of you.  You are much more than that.  Life consists of many choices and ever-changing scenes, and you can use the decisions and experiences of the past to inform your choices now to create a better future and ensure that the “good” of your life—friends, family, and the love and nurture for which you are known—will live after you.

 

Until next time,

Roger 

“Even the hairs on your head are counted.  So don’t be afraid!  You are worth much more…” Luke 12:7 CEV