A lot of times in my life, I tried to stop people from doing things that I thought were dumb.This, in light of the fact that I’ve always justified the dumb things that I do as a “new experience” or even “I just had to do it”
I remember when I tried to stop a friend from driving home drunk, which he (of course) resisted, insisting that his house was just around the corner (it was) and that he could see straight (he couldn’t). We were both relatively young, invincible and the like. So I let him off the hook and he made his way to his car.
Now stop for a second. Maybe someone’s running judgements on me in that situation. Maybe they’re saying “you should have forcibly stopped him. Forced him to go home with you.” Sure, when you’re not in that parking lot and he’s drunkenly grinning and insisting how great he is, and how you know this fool doesn’t give any regard to good life advice when dead sober, maybe you lose your will to wrestle him to the ground and bind him with duct tape so you can drop him at his front door.
So I let him go. And within 30 seconds of leaving the parking lot I knew I made a mistake, because I saw him pull into the wrong lane when making his exit. I would make it home in one piece, but he would total the car. Apparently, when they found him he told them “lock me up, I’m too fucking drunk”. And so they did.
Life isn’t the morality play that it’s made out to be in the media. It’s filled with a million little decisions that we can agonize over if, God forbid, something goes horribly awry. Most of the time, it doesn’t, so we just keep on keeping on. But if my buddy had killed somebody, or himself, instead of just wrecking the car, I might be a little harsher on myself.
