Thursday, April 10, 2014

There's No Such Thing As An Original Sin

...driving Philly’s infamous corridor of angst, the Schuylkill Expressway, with the radio on, heard an old Elvis Costello song...I’m Not Angry....with one line that goes:  there’s no such thing as an original sin...which I’ve always thought was kind of a clever play on words and traditional Christian doctrine...

...sin isn’t a word I use much...associating it, as I tend to do, with traditions in which any baby worth knowing seems to have drowned in the guilty bathwater a long, long time ago, leaving a tub I have little interest in entering....though I do think an awful lot about faults and mistakes...and all kindsa not particularly commendable behavior...mostly my own...

...and, gotta admit, even while basking in recrimination and self-loathing, I tend to look at these little blemishes on my character as kinda special...unique, even...enough that the world might recoil in horror if the charges against me were read in public...

...like, y’know, I’m one badass evil kinda dude...
 
...but, the truth is, it’s the same old tired crap...stuff millions if not billions of people around the world are probably guilty of at this very moment...that’ve been causing problems for a hundred thousand years...not particularly good, maybe, nothin’ to be proud of, some of it best apologized for, with reparations made, in fact.......but that’s all...
 
...like somebody I was helping with her college application essays a little while ago, who wasn’t sure what to say about a period of her life which was notably blank on her résumé...said she didn’t want to mention that she drank herself into jail and rehab...which was understandable...
 
...and yet, I told her, you’ve had a drinking problem....you’re not an axe murderer....half the people on the admissions committee have probably had drinking problems....that it was best be to simply be open about it...

...and she got in....one of those admissions officers even noted how touched she was by the honesty of her essay...
 
...(it should be noted, that, even if you are an axe murderer, that’s hardly a groundbreaking accomplishment....have you cleaved as many heads from necks as Genghis Khan? I don’t think so....so if that’s how you’re planning on making your mark, might as well forget it...it’s been done)...

...there’s no such thing as an original sin....and not need to go through life as if our faults are anything special...

1 comment:

nothingprofound said...

Yes, it's pretty hard to be original in the sin department or any other department for that matter. Still, in my whole time on this earth, I've yet to meet two people who are completely alike. I find that a completely charming paradox.