We were exuberant. There was nothing that could dampen our enthusiasm. We were going to do it and do with all guns blazing!
After we did it, someone we respected quietly had a word with us to ask if we would have liked that to have been done to us. When we stopped kidding around and throwing out silly excuses, it sunk in what we had done. No. We would not have wanted that to happen to us. We would have been upset if someone had done that to us. Our friend didn’t hammer it home. The point was clear.
I think it was my mate Billy who approached the owner and apologised for us all. We all turned up though with that sheepish look of shame that can’t meet the gaze of the person we offended with our childish antics. We agreed to clean up and also stay around to help pack up everything away. To be fair we did feel better for doing that afterwards. Not that we did it to feel better, but there was no sense of lingering guilty feelings or shame.
There was something about getting the word at the right time in the right way that sparked something in me. It wasn’t following the crowd on this one. This was about acknowledging the truth of the matter and seeing it from the other angle and seeing that what was right was to turn the feeling into action.
It was a sobering and humbling episode that reminded me and reminds me as I recollect on it all these years later that often a conviction will lead to a correcting of the course you’re on.
(Photo by Maik Fischer on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 