Blog 2384 – 05.05.2022
If I Could
Yesterday I received a text from one of my long time buddy’s sisters saying that he was dying and already in hospice care. Roger and I have not talked in several years. Our friendship was it seems one of the many casualties of Facebook in the run up to the 2016 Presidential Election great divide in this country. I expressed an opinion contrary to many of my conservative Republican friends of whom Roger was one and he unfriended me for it. I am sorry that we could not just have agreed to disagree, but that was apparently not an option for Rog on that particular issue. It is a sadness when anyone who holds a different opinion must be be also pedophiles and baby eaters as well.
Though he may yet consider me his “enemy” I never was and as the song says, “I’d give him more if I could.” I read years ago in a book by famed self-improvement author Dale Carnegie a lesson that he shared about our all too human nature. He wrote that when he was a young man he wrote to a famous writer how much he enjoyed his writing and that he hoped to be a famous writer one day. Seeking to impress his hero he included a rather flippant turn of phrase at the end of his short letter. The writer took the time to scold him in a return letter for that one remark overlooking all the rest that he had written. Mister Carnegie said he was not a revengeful person, but that when he read of that famous author’s death years later, a smile came upon his lips. It was not one of his proudest moments.
I recall the photo of President Obama, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other high ranking officials in the Situation Room the night Terrorist Leader Osama bin Laden was “taken out.” They were rejoicing at his and the others deaths. That was not one of theirs or our finest moments as a nation nor was the rejoicing in the streets in the Middle East when the twin towers fell. Love we are told does not rejoice in evil, but rejoices in the truth.
The truth is I have mourned my lost friend already too long and his passing gives me no cause to smile. I can find no vindication for the harsh things he wrote about me. To deny them would have only fueled the feud. I would rather remember all the good times we once shared and all we agreed upon rather than one disagreement.
Perhaps in the next go round we will meet again, my friend and I. I sort of have the feeling that we already have in previous lives, and perhaps that we even planned a great falling out for this one, just to see what that might be like. For my part we never need to repeat this scenario.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
Roger’s too,
David White
Jack Johnson – If I Could (Lyrics)
theencouragingword 