If I Told You A Secret, You Won't Tell A Soul, Will You Hold It and Keep It Alive?

I've had a lot on my mind for what seems like a lifetime.  I've been harboring guilt and shame for things I did when I was 4 years old for the last 33 years, on top of every sinful thought and deed that's followed.  Then on top of my own immorality rests the transgressions of others that I have been witness to, and not confronted or exposed.  We truly are born into sin if you look at your existence as a collective experience inclusive of all that you take in vicariously through the actions and feelings of others around you.

I picked this song, Travis's Love Will Come Through, simply because I am at a loss for songs as of late, my literary mood has been elusive.  Much like with my conscience, I can turn off my internal monologue and give "having perspective" a rest and just live moment to moment.  It seems like a shortcut to escapism in a way.  Well, I've decided to just embrace that inner monologue, and embrace my conscience.  I had a dream last night that egged me on.

I was in some sort of situation where some strangers were asking something of me.  I felt put out and alienated by whatever they asked, and maybe I snapped a little?  One of these strangers transformed before my eyes, and admonished me for displaying a temper.  The person became bird-like somehow to my eyes, but in some ways still human.  It was a dream, and I could visually represent it with an illustration perhaps?  The power of this entity's voice and tone conveyed an otherworldly authority.  I woke up thinking about whether I do have a temper problem, and how that will be judged in the eyes of Righteousness.

I'd like to think I have a decent amount of control over my emotions.  I always felt I'd come a long way since my early childhood where I would "go crazy" when upset, or my adolescence when I would punch holes in the drywall.  But yeah, I am still an emotional person who's developed a lot of healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms to prevent the unflattering emotional outbursts of my youth.  Part of my problem may have been my active disassociation from my childhood and adolescence once I was able to literally escape it by relocating for college and severing most of those ties, or re-establishing them on adult terms.   I may have thought I got over being angry and holding grudges, but I still have a bent for resentment that I wrestle with.  I want to think I'll come out on the better side of that struggle more often that not.

With age and experience people get set in their ways, or so I've been warned.  That flies in the face of the saying "learning is a life-long process." Whoever said that learning has to result in the application of that knowledge? I say this all the time, but it never fails to be true, "Just because you know better doesn't mean you'll do better."  Knowing Better and Doing Better are related ideas, but that doesn't mean the prior will result in the latter.  All that said, I'm reminded of a principle I was introduced to from a radio sermon that I used to offer as perspective to friends and strangers alike, "Love without honesty is cruelty. Honestly without love is brutality."

Anyway if we must err in this life, I hope we err on the side of True (Honest) Love.  I hope I can, and do.  Sometimes I wonder.