“Oh, You’ve Got Way Too Much There to Enjoy”

November 16, 2008
“Dad, will you keep this for us,” my oldest daughter said as she packed her kids up for their flight back to Los Angeles. I eyed the two gallon sized freezer bags filled with a large assortment of Halloween treats as the glee of forgotten youth surfaced from somewhere in my age-d psyche. “Sure will, “I said as if I was actually going to mail these ill-gotten gains. Oh, never mind that this candy was now two weeks old and was actually second hand treats from my other grandchildren. It was the simple pleasure of gaining a trove of candy, er, I mean, helping my daughter in her time of need. Yeah, OK, you can see through my ruse. I know, I am selfish but you can keep your “taking candy from a baby” judgmental thinking to yourself. It’s getting something for nothing that we’re talking about here.Well, my daughter and her family made their plane arriving home safely. Thank you for your concerns. They did make it back in time to breathe the latest wildfire winds lapping at the outskirts of greater Los Angeles.
However, in reference to the candy, it laid on the kitchen counter for the better part of the next week. For some reason I didn’t pay much attention to it until the other day as a Twix bar called to me from beneath its hiding. I felt compelled to freed it from its freezer bag prison, pealed it from its scrunched wrapper and as I bit into this squashed chocolate and cookie bar I instantly was presented with that unmistakable taste of staleness. It just wasn’t as delectable as I had hoped or imagined but something inside me reminded me to not disappoint my dearly departed mother. You see, growing up my mother often admonished me that somewhere children in some forgotten continent would appreciate eating vegetables I didn’t like and I figured I shouldn’t waste this candy bar either.
Of course, when it comes to justifying ill behavior it doesn’t take any of us very long to master our own deception. Oh, we’ll rationalize and moralize: “Oh, they have way too much there to enjoy.” “Only this once” or “It ain’t so bad” or maybe “Oh, they’ll understand.” Rationalize, justify, minimize one’s mental negotiating but down deep inside where the psyche battles against a stung conscious a person knows. Call it what you want but give it enough time to chew on a person and eat at their gut and the God’s honest truth is known. We were built to know deep down inside that it is just plain wrong to take something that isn’t ours or eat too much candy and so it is with giving what isn’t earned. Any of the three will make eventually make a person and a society sick. Even the Good Book says if a “person doesn’t work they shouldn’t eat.” (Hold on here, we’re talking about people who can work not those who actually need us to provide for them. That is our moral obligation!)
Now, there is a moral to this story. A person can justify just about anything when it comes to getting what they want even though it isn’t what they need. You may think that I am stretching to gain an illustration for a lesson but I don’t think so. Plainly and simply put: it smacks of corruption to gleefully gain something at someone else’s expense and things gained freely are not quite as scrumptious as when they are earned, no matter how sweetly the deal sounds. Of course, if you take what someone else has worked to secure without working yourself then it is just plain wrong.
It has been a few days since I swallowed what was given to me and every time I think about it I still get a bad taste in my throat. No, I am not mailing the candy to my grandchildren in L.A.…their Grandmother announced that we didn’t need it and threw it all away. She said it would make me sick.
Well, one of these days The Reaper is going to hand in his final report to Someone higher. Until then don’t make yourself sick ‘cause there’s a lot of sweet sounding junk being bagged up and handed out.
THE-GRIMM-REAPER-REPORT © 16 NOV 2008
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