God Have Mercy

Every once in awhile a story will come across the line that will make you cringe because it is so inhumane, and so disconcerting that you won't be able to imagine the greed, hate, envy, lack of self-control or disrespect that comes with it. Uusually, I'm speaking of a murder, or a rape, or any other heinous crime.

Sometimes, I'm just talking about how some men treat their own family. Marriage isn't an easy thing. It can almost be broken down to be a contract between two people who couldn't keep their hands off of each other. Sometimes, it becomes about putting a square peg in a round hole (sexual conotations aside).

My wife and I have a healthy respect for some of the so-called slights in our marriage - we have a true tendency to laugh them off. I always open the discussion of marriage with a joke courtesy of George Burns - "I was married by a judge - I should have asked for a jury."

I can spin around for a half an hour on what has been a problem - and my wife will sit beside me laughing and cajoling the entire team. And that's because we found the comfort zone - we kneed and clawed for place and position, added kids to the mix - pushed the barriers a little more - and then sort of relaxed into a fugue state where we exist for each other and the good of the family.

That is the perch I'm sitting on right now as I consider a man walking away for purely selfish reasons. I've always wanted to write a long piece about marriage, its dissolution, and where the love goes. I'm off to a good start, using my imagination to appreciate the coldness, the cowardly acts, the self-righteous feeling of entitlement, and the complete lack of ability to understand what is right there in front of you as you search for something else.

I am forced to use the same eyes to evaluate the scene. My eyes have never seen such absolute horror. I don't have the imagination to understand that if I were to stray that I would be crushing the very children that I trudge off to work each day to nurture. What could possibly be worth the crushed spirit of my own child? Money - nope! A different girl every night of the week - Nope! Britney in her prime? Nope! Endless golf and drinking to extinction every night - possible, but nope! Nope! Nope! A line of virgins in heaven waiting on me - Nope Once More!

Of course, Springsteen saves me again - In his song Brilliant Disguise the last line speaks of deceit in a marriage and the protaganist jumps in head-first - "God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of."

May God have mercy on the man serving as the antagonist in today's blog, because I can't see it. I just don't have the eyes for it.

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