Lessons from Jail

Lately I've begun to feel like I'm stuck in a small room with a radio playing a bad country song.  Over and over and over.  Everything seems to be about broken hearts and cheating, breakups and bar fights, getting drunk and being thrown in jail.  Well, I think to myself, it's tragic and melodramatic but at least it's colorful rather than dull.  I've never visited anyone in jail before and I hardly know the protocol - until now it had never occurred to me that I'd ever need to know - but life is full of surprises.  After all, I was the one who bought that til death us do part thing.  Twice.

I suppose it's just one more reminder that when it comes to people, it's hard to know what we're truly all about.  Here is a gifted musician, bright and quick witted, well educated and generous of nature, a cat lover with a steady job and a ready smile.   And here is that same young man, wild eyed with rage, vindictive and menacing, out of control and spitting poison with every breath.   Like Dr. Jeckyll after drinking the elixir, he revealed another personality - filled with hate so stunning that it took my breath away.  Disintegration was quick to follow and in a matter of weeks the woman he loved so dearly ordered him out, the newspaper fired him, and friends fell like dominoes.  After a nasty fight in a local bar, he was arrested and jailed without a dime for bail and human nature being what it is, the popular opinion was that since he'd brought it all on himself, he could rot.  He had driven away or threatened to hurt so many people that not a single, solitary soul was willing to step up to his defense.

A handful of people take pleasure in this fall from grace but the majority are simply saddened and bewildered.

I want to think we would all reach out to a friend in need, that there's enough kindness and empathy in us to want to help someone in deep trouble.  But I also know that feelings are fragile things, easily bruised and delicate.  Spit on an offer to help once too often and you may not get another.  There are times when we're defeated before we start and we distance ourselves for the sake of peace of mind and security.  We walk away because to stay risks our own well being.

My heart, however, tells me he needs a friend and that I need to make time to be one.