A Price for Everything

I am no paragon of virtue.

There are too many people who can blackmail me about my life for me to run about as if I am a flawless saint with not a trace of scandal in my past.

Each of those indescretions, be they great or small, has exacted a price. Sometimes a price that was most painful to pay and which took a great deal of suffering to complete.

Patient people who love me have been compelled by the force of my actions to wade through the quicksand of the reality I have created in order to see me through to the salvation waiting on the solid ground of the other side.

It hasn't been easy for them or me.

Michael Phelps is the lastest casualty in the war between what we know to be right and the little tempter within who makes everything seem like it's no big deal.

The tempter's voice whispers that 'you are special and the rules don't apply the same for you'. It whispers of consequence eluded and lame apologies accepted with no further ado. Carefully, the tempter makes it seem so slick and so well packaged that something which would have made you shrink in horror mere months earlier now appears to be 'no big deal' - except that it is.

Which the tempter knew full well all along. Now, he laughs.

Many people who are picking up the shards of glass from their own houses, are tossing stones like there is no tomorrow. Get right with yourselves on this one people, just because his particular 'flavor' of sin wasn't your 'flavor' doesn't make yours appear more lily white. Nor does it make the hue of black on his sin darker because you didn't do it, too.

We mere mortals make stupid mistakes, create dumb choices with painful consequences and hurt people around us in an ever-increasing quest for self-gratification. What we don't want within this process is accountability.

The very word accountability reminds me of some prissy, glasses wearing, starched shirt, bean counting dweeb who is a total square.

But that is exactly what we freewheeling sinners need - the steadying presence of one who doesn't call it a day until all the checks and balances have toted up. Someone who says, "You can't have this 'positive' without creating a 'negative' somewhere."

Michael Phelps is starting the accountability phase. Endorsements from Kellogg's are gone. Children do NOT need bong smoking, pot huffing poster boys. And it doesn't make me, a fellow sinner, a hypocrit for saying so.

He DESERVES the three-months long suspension from the swimming authorities who govern his sport.

I can't say whether he deserves more or less. I have been extended unexpected mercy too many times when what I truly deserved was the justice I had earned. While not yet perfect and still learning about what 'accountable' means, I hope I am learning.

What remains to be seen is whether Mr. Phelps will learn from this mistake. There are children who idolize him. Which begs the question - why do we idolize mortals who are guaranteed to let us down horribly, time after time? Do we idolize them because we secretly believe they are somehow better than us or stronger or more perfect?

We have the same price in our daily lives in the friends we choose, the actions we perform and the stupidity that we level onto the world.

The truth is that somewhere, sometime the check has to be paid. The dancing and singing of the piper can't last forever.

Like the people of Hamlin so long ago who wanted a reduction of problems and difficulties with no accountability, eventually the price they paid was most dear indeed.

What we should all do is when the first bright notes of the piper sound in our ears is to decide then and there that we will not be caught by the siren song of the slick and well packaged lures he dangles before us.

Some decisions need to be made only one time.

I think that this one qualifies.

If only we could all learn that lesson for our own 'flavor' of sin. We might be less bankrupt emotionally and more rich spiritually.