"With my dying breath, I do apologize to all I've known"

I was just watching Bill Maher's "Real Time show". They were talking about Rep. Anthony Weiner's (corrected: Democrat) photo of his briefs and his tiny appendage therein and his claims that it may have been hacked and sent out to demean him. Republicans in office don't need much help in demeaning themselves. This merely points out that neither do the Democrats. And apparently, neither do some readers. One might assume it has something to do with a lack of power and control issues.

Tony Weiner

Regardless, they got on about Carl Rove's mentor, Lee Atwater who Bill said was the "Grandfather of dirty political tricks".

Producer Adam McKay was on the show as comic relief and said he's doing a film about Atwater with a script by Jesse Armstrong who wrote the script for the film "In the Loop".

They said, get ready for a tangent, but about that Atwater apology situation... well let's get this Weiner thing out of the way first:

Gennette Cordova, is the 21-year-old college student from Seattle who received the photo.  She issued a lengthy statement over the weekend, saying that she has never supported Weiner’s claim that his account was hacked.

“Her name is Ginger — it makes sense he might have mixed us up,” Cordova said, referring to Ginger Lee, a stripper and porn star who follows Weiner on Twitter. 

According to Politicao.com: "In March, Lee tweeted about wanting “sexual relations” with Weiner and, less than two weeks later, she wrote that she’d received a private direct message from the congressman. Weiner had also followed Lee on Twitter but said he stopped doing so when he found out who she was."

Okay, whatever.

Atwater. It seems he got a brain tumor and was dying and sent out apologies to people for his actions during his lifetime, especially his nasty politics and lack of any kind of reasonable moral compass. Some of those people said they discounted his comments since he did it under the duress of dying.

And therein lay my point in all of this. 

A few years ago, I started trying to contact people I've known in my life. Those who I haven't already made contact with, or who contacted me over the years. I have no fear of near death, though I have had many near death experiences: hanging off of cliffs, parachute malfunctions, car accidents (not one, was my fault by the way and most were someone else driving), and other things. So I expect to live for more decades to come, hopefully very pleasant and interesting ones (and hopefully not the ancient Chinese curse types).

I have been writing for years. Some of my writings have touched on reflections (like my story, "Marking Time"). What have I done in life? Who have I affected? And most importantly, how positive have those relationships and interactions been? Have you thought about that? Have you done anything about it? Have you tried to change yourself consciously for the better through your life? Have you checked those conclusions with the actual people you no longer know, to find if your fantasy matches up with the reality of another's perception of you?

Is it important? 

My point here is that if you only do this on your death bed, it appears that many people do not give it much importance, especially, I'm sure, if you believe in any kind of religious reaction after death. Because then you aren't doing it for any kind of real reason, but for a self centered reason of saving your ass from burning in Hell for all eternity, which you should have been thinking about a long time before death was ever a consideration. 

Right?

I have tried to find these people, important to me at one time in my past but no longer in my life. I have found some of them, I have gotten contact information to others. And sadly, I couldn't find some of them anywhere.

So, my mind is at peace. For the most part anyway, because it may be those I haven't spoken with, who are the most incriminating, who have the biggest mirror to hold up to me. And in not talking to them I can continue on with my fantasy of my being a good guy in the past. The people I have talked to, and have in some cases reestablished a relationship with, have not always had the best of things to say, but I would say that for the most part, they have to the point that I can rest assured in my beliefs that I wasn't that bad a guy and that my view of my past was an accurate one. That is not to say, I was an angel, but that I knew where my good and bad sides and actions where.

One ex girlfriend, when I tried to apologize for any actions of being a jerk in High School just said that we all have done things and it's all in the past, let's let it go and we're more mature, have learned a lot through life and hopefully have become and tried to become, better people because of it all. A sigh of relief. But then, I didn't think I did anything that bad to her, the situation was reversed actually and I had most definitely forgiven her in my mind. But then, I wasn't here either. My downside with her was that I didn't break up with her in person, or on the phone. But hey, I was seventeen at the time.

It's a good thing to check your moral compass against reality, or against your best version of that, in other's evaluation of you and who you were. Then put that up against who you are now, how you see yourself, how your friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances see you now. If you don't like what you see, do something about it. If you do like what you see, take another look, because you have to then ask yourself, are you deluding yourself just to self stroke your ego to feel good? Or, are you really a good guy (or girl)?

I've been a proponent for a long time, of people not having to do big things to affect change in the world; they don't have to make grand gestures to change the world.

Some of us aren't destined or designed for that. And that is okay. IF every person, people who would never make any kind of change in the world, were to simply do a small thing, have an attitude that is positive, do one thing, produce children who change something, and if there are many of those kinds of people, and each only did one thing, the world would indeed, be a better place because of it. I think this is played down a lot by people who do, telling people who don't (or appear to don't) that they don't count unless, they do something bigger and better and often. But that's not realistic. Better that everyone do something small, than think they can do nothing. Because if everyone thinks they can affect change, but only doing small things, or thinking a good direction, that itself can affect change in its own ways.

As long as life is, life is short. Don't come upon the conclusion, on your deathbed, that you've mucked things up and then is the time to rectify things. Leave this world with people missing you and carrying on good thoughts about you, don't just take that belief to the grave with you, inaccurately. Sometimes, changing the world a little for the better, isn't by running for office, joining Doctors Across Borders, or giving everything to charity. Sometimes, it's just in leaving people with a positive thought about you as a person, after you're gone. Or their thinking, "I wish I would be more like that", or "I wish I did something like they did". 

Maybe, just maybe, because of you, someone might do even one little thing to add some positive to the world; and you will be the one to thank for it. And that, in itself, is a quiet legacy all unto its own.