molly.com
Tuesday 30 May 2006
Best Intentions and Roads to Hell
It’s been said that good intentions pave the path to hell.
Being of skeptical faith I think of the things that have led me down a path I am unsure of.
I want to ask a very personal and important question: Of all the things you’ve ever done in your life, what was the most wrong thing you’ve ever done?
Filed under: faith(less)
Posted by: Molly | 4:15 pm |
May 30th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
I think the future will show me, but now I tend to think that dropping out of university and starting a business wasn’t that smart. Bad balancing of life/work might be the same case. I don’t know, it might be just a bad week and I feel this down… The only thing I know is that every decision I made could be even worse, so it’s not that bad after all
May 30th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I think I started it about 5 years ago, haven’t managed to finish it - and now I don’t know if I ever can…
Hmmm… tell you what. I’ll just not think about it ever again…
May 30th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
I think the biggest mistake that I’ve made was letting my professional life take over my personal life to the point where I was always working, and never spending enough time with friends and family. I was so bad that after working at my day job for 9 hours, I would come home and start working on side projects until I went to sleep, to wake up the next day and start it all over again.
May 30th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Spending years searching for religion when a life waiting to be lived was right in front of my face the whole time … life is religion. The years I spent trying to figure it out seem silly in light of the simplicity characterizing ‘being’ itself.
May 30th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
completely trust my mind
May 30th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
Deciding that 4 years in college qualified me for better than a minimum wage job.
I was a Radio/TV/Film major, working as a video engineer in the campus studio. In 1982, there was this cable company that was hiring everybody, but they started everyone as a cameraman (no problem there, I loved camera work).
Somehow, I just couldn’t see the benefit in moving to Atlanta from Chicago for a minimum wage job.
Of course, it was CNN.
Since this is more of a “didn’t do” than a do, it’s entirely possible that something else was worse. The sad thing is, I’m sure I’ll screw up even more in the years to come.
May 30th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
It’s human nature to try and block out the memory of life’s mistakes (especially our own)…so I actually have trouble recalling one single event above all others.
I’ve done wrong things that I’m not proud of - mostly while under the influence of lots and LOTS of alchohol. I think I’ve done enough good things to balance it out though…err *thinks*…yeah!!
Molly - is your question a personal one or a spiritual one? (Or both?!)
May 30th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
That’s a tough question to answer, but I guess I’d say that choosing to not attend my sister’s wedding is, quite possibly, the greatest wrong of my life so far.
May 30th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
blink tag .. ’nuff said
May 30th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
You probably should have included an email link or exhortation to comment anonymously or something, because I can’t imagine you’re going to get a whole lot of attributed confessionals. I know I wouldn’t. (If I were going to admit that kind of thing publicly, I’d blog it!)
May 30th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Going to work in the family business. I’ve been there 15 years, and hated most of it. But once you’re in, you’re in for life!
I had deep reservations before I took the job, but didn’t listen to my intuition.
Most of the things that have gone wrong in my life have in some way been connected with my job. It’s a curse
Although ironically, it did get me into technology, which I love. Every cloud…
May 31st, 2006 at 12:19 am
Getting into the wrong relationship. (This is a bit too personal to publish my name here.)
May 31st, 2006 at 1:23 am
Depends how you choose to live. Personally I don’t believe in any God or anything, I basically have no faith. So I will not take an action, then seek forgiveness - because that doesn’t make up for my actions. Instead I have to decide whether I could forgive myself. I think long and hard before I do something. I think how it will affect myself and others, then decide whether or not to take the action. I don’t smoke (never have), don’t drink much, don’t do drugs, don’t break the law, don’t sleep around. You could say I have a clear conscience.
May 31st, 2006 at 1:23 am
Where is the entity that makes a choice? What is design but the limitation of options? Is there any such thing as a loving dictatorship?
What is the difference between an opinion and the truth? How does choice relate to opinion? How does the mind make a decision?
Why did I do that instead of this? Is it possible to not-do something? It’s like holding nothing in the palm of your hand.
What is action? What is reaction? What is inaction?
I am the effect of previous causes and the cause of new effects. Where is the entity that makes a choice? Is it in the cause or is it in the effect?
Where do ideas come from? Why do they arise in pairs, in opposition to one another? What is male without female, repulsive without attractive, positive without negative?
And what are all of these without the concept “I”? Can we experience hot and cold without having an I? Can we experience tired and alert without first having a before and an after?
First?! First?!!
Is there any such thing as a river? How does it exist apart from the label “river”? The water is never the same and the earth is never the same. Where is the river?
Is life a blessing or a curse?
May 31st, 2006 at 4:11 am
Taking it too sersious what other think is right or wrong—instead of uncompromisingly following my own path and beliefs. I think that’s the major lesson I’ve learned: Do it your way if you really sersious about it, and do it now. No matter who you listen to, there are always people who think that’s wrong. So I listen to myself and nobody else. Selfish? Sort of. But it’s my life and I have the damn right to decided what’s best for me, selfish or not.
May 31st, 2006 at 4:57 am
Killed a man.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:04 am
I shouldnt have slept with my friends wife…even though he (my buddy) said it was fine…I should’ve known better. This was 20 + years ago and I still regret it.
May 31st, 2006 at 8:18 am
…in Reno, just to watch him die
May 31st, 2006 at 8:39 am
I actually sent a photograph of a friend to a serial killer (Ottis Toole) for him to draw a portrait of her. To make it even worse, her father is an ex-cop.
Luckily, Ottis drew a really cool portrait and sent the photo back. I have it framed in my office right next to me. But that could have been a really, really, really stupid thing to do.
May 31st, 2006 at 9:22 am
not waiting for marriage and let my curiousity get the better of me, and lost my innocence way before my time
May 31st, 2006 at 10:07 am
Mines preachy and from the Bible, but its what I believe:
Anytime I don’t visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep myself unspotted from the world.
Anytime I know to do good, and I do it not.
May 31st, 2006 at 10:15 am
Turning my back on the Lord and not going to church for six years.
May 31st, 2006 at 11:02 am
Is “Johnny” trying to mock me? I like Johnny Cash, but I don’t find that particularly amusing.
It’s good to see I’m not the only sinner here, anyway. What a joke..
May 31st, 2006 at 11:36 am
I haven’t gone out and met people and done lots of cool things. Never gone to a music festival, never been to see a band play. Never danced with a hot girl in a club.
Basically just never got a life. I think not going to uni and working with people twice my age since I was 17 is the reason for all that. Still undecided if not going to uni was wrong.
On the larger scale of things it’s not that wrong is it? Damn I even suck at being wrong.
May 31st, 2006 at 1:51 pm
The stupidest thing I’ve ever done is start smoking.
The wrongest is to allow Halle Berry and Bjork get me drunk and persuade me to pose for those photographs …
May 31st, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Never told my brother that I loved him.
May 31st, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Depends what you mean by “wrong”. If you really mean what is most regretted, I don’t think I really regret anything. Every fork in the path, every choice made has brought me here. And here is the right place to be.
If you mean illegal/immoral, then that’s a different story but probably not one to be posted here
May 31st, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Sounds like you are doing some soul searching. Perhaps this is not the best place for it. Then again perhaps it is. My worst (most regretted and most wrong), is having had a son with a woman I didn’t care that much for. We put him up for adoption, but I often wonder how his life is going.
Tanks for your Support
Pat O’Hara
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May 31st, 2006 at 6:54 pm
That’s an easy one. I picked up my family, my life and all 12,000 pounds of our collective shite and moved from one side of the country to the other - for money. My paycheck is bigger, my freetime is smaller, and ironically, I don’t have any more expendable cash than I did before I moved.
May 31st, 2006 at 10:34 pm
What I regret most in my spiritual life is trying to appease my family and its beliefs; I still do it, in fact, despite regretting it and feeling it might be a mistake.
To 100 percent admit you are not an evangelical Christian in my family would be a bit like popping out of the proverbial closet of sexuality. All of that is considered bordering all right for other people, but I’m “in the family,” so I should believe in what I was originally taught and act accordingly. But I don’t personally, actually, and of that I have no regrets.
Long story short, I believe on should discover on on his own and with the kind influences of others. Talk about it with other people who are willing to be open, and converse in a respectful, adult manner, no matter another person’s religion or lack thereof.
I’ve wasted years in the presence of my family, and will likely waste more, “following” beliefs that I’ve rarely shared with them entirely. So, will my good intentions toward them get me into heaven, considering their nature? I jest. :p
June 2nd, 2006 at 2:20 am
not sure if this counts,
Always taking the safe option and never believing in myself enough to just take the bigger chances. So I guess my answer is “wasted opportunities”.
Oh and I used to tell people not to use p tags because the rendered result was less relable across browsers than double br tags. I’m really sorry Molly, I know better now and I’ll make it up, you know I will.
June 2nd, 2006 at 2:35 am
the most wrong thing i am still doing is chosing to be an unhappy person, to be pessimistic, to be cinical. And I don’t think i can get back now.
June 2nd, 2006 at 5:37 am
Not believing in myself. At all. For years.
I still have bad days, but I’m working on it
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:36 am
Staying when I should have left.
June 2nd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Trusted a former race-car driver to drive me back home (on super-swervy roads) while later realizing (I had forgotten) he had taken LSD, as we careened into the forest, smashing into a medium-sized tree, landing upside-down in the pitch-dark, on a cloudy-night with no moonlight. Though, …lol; how did I make it out without a scratch, let alone make it even out of the car in those conditions? Only thing I had lost was a sandwich for the next work day; it’d inadvertently gotten squished… and to top it all off, …the driver was a native american who never registered this vehicle, and threatened to rough-up my friend & I if we didn’t help him strip all the evidence out of the vehicle, and carry loads & loads of junk in-hand & on-back for about 7-miles at about 3:30 at night… which is pretty brutal, considering we had just came out of a car-wreck, lol.
June 2nd, 2006 at 6:57 pm
…oh yeah, I forgot to throw this part in. I had just gotten out of the hospital a year earlier with a former heart-condition. Apparantly the doctors told me that too much adrenaline causes tachycardias (enlarged hearts). I used to have health-care, but now I can’t afford it. So I don’t even know if my heart is enlarging right now because I can’t pay for a doctor’s visit and the medical equipment.
June 3rd, 2006 at 11:50 am
When I was young and stupid, certain substances should have been avoided. It never hurt anyone else as there wasn’t anybody, but it did me little good.
June 3rd, 2006 at 1:35 pm
…not thinking about work life enough and then only to realise in my mid-thirties i had found my pasion in life (web design etc). Time to play catch-up to all you guys !
June 4th, 2006 at 9:22 am
Personally the most wrong thing I ever did was to leave my wife. She’s with a better person now, but what I did was wrong. No one else was involved, just my stupid ego. Career-wise the most stupid thing I did was to stick with print design instead of getting into the web earlier.
Other than that, I’m very good (bad?) at simply making the wrong life choices, so that I have unintentionally hurt many people, lost lots of money, missed many opportunities etc etc (you get the picture). Setting out to do things with good intentions is right, but the law of unintended consequences often catches us out. Having a good heart should lead to a clear conscience, but everyday we have to live with the consequences of just getting up in the morning - that’s life, some get it right, some don’t… (currently I’m getting it very wrong, but that’s another story!)
June 7th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
[…] Molly asked her readers what their biggest mistake was. One reader replied: I think the biggest mistake that I’ve made was letting my professional life take over my personal life to the point where I was always working, and never spending enough time with friends and family. I was so bad that after working at my day job for 9 hours, I would come home and start working on side projects until I went to sleep, to wake up the next day and start it all over again. […]
June 13th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Hi Molly,
I’m through with most of your older book HTML 4.0 and would like to personally thank you for sharing your knowledge & expertise with others, in particular me. I picked it up at an estate sale, brand new with the disk unopened. I only paid a dollar for it, but it is worth its weight in gold and would have paid more for such an informative book.
Thanks to you I have learned a great deal which is beginning to help me with my work for Xerox Corp. And I’m sure I will have fun with web programming into my retirement, as well.
I’m also learning Javascript, DHTML, and XML coding.
DO you have any newer books published yet?
June 15th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
I wish I had smiled more when I was younger. My face was always too serious.
I have learned to smile more over the years no mater what, because thats
how I want people to remember me. Its a big Giving.
August 10th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Never told my sister that I loved her.
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The smile is a cure for the soul.
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November 21st, 2006 at 5:16 am
I would suggest to you that people are evil. Denying our own evil nature is one of the many evils that we do. We are deceitful. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we are pretty good.
People are ignorant because they tolerate ignorance. People have been cued in to the facts that they are ignorant about many things. Thus, they have a responsibility to learn and to grow. To refuse this responsibility, for whateve reason, is to willfully choose the path of ignorance. We become deceived because we invite deception.
Evil.
Have you ever done something wrong, knowing that it was wrong, and justifying your behavior in your own mind? Do you remember the first time doing it, you really struggled with your conscience? Then the next time it was easier. Later, it got to the point that you would commit the transgression without any second thought. When people do this, their hearts become hard.
Evil.
Knowing that there is all kind of suffering in the world, and then living a self-serving decadent life, we think that we are pretty good people. But what’s really happening is that those who are out of sight tend to be out of mind. If we were at the beach, and we saw someone drowning, it would be unconscionable to ignore the person drowning. But, we know about starvation and the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and many many people do nothing. They continue living their lives without giving these other people a second thought. Out of sight; out of mind.
Evil.
Or how about being motivated by pride. People will often not admit that they are wrong and refuse to be reconciled in relationships because of pride. They make other people suffer - often bitterly - because of pride.
Evil.
Or how about people who cheat on their spouses? People who put more value on a temporary moment of pleasure than they do on their relationships with their spouses and children.
Evil.
If we are going to be effective in making the world a better place, we must start by acknowledging and confessing our own evil tendencies within our hearts. If we deny the evil within us, we invite ignorance and deception. But if we confess the evil that is within us - calling it what it really is - then we have taken the first step in overcoming evil and making the world a better place.
May God give us the wisdom to see the right; the will to choose it; and the strength to make it endure.
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Danke
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