Remember the Good

Most people are not remembered for the good that they do. The average, everyday Joe who walks through life without fame or notoriety or any glory of any kind is usually known for the mistakes he's made. Those are the things friends bring up when reminiscing about him or the stories that family tells or the source of all the whispering at the holidays.

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. Some of them have been pretty big. And I have made plenty of unwise choices that, if given the opportunity, I would jump at the chance to change. And while I say that I try to live with no regrets and that I usually pay no mind to what others think of me. The thought that I will go down in history as merely a list of mistakes and bad choices causes me great angst.

The woman I am today is a product of all that bad but also of all the good.

Fueling anger and hatred is often easier than breeding love and that is why we as a people have a tendency to recall bad over good. Think about how effortlessly you can stir a group of people who are unhappy with a common situation. Getting them fired up over their given cause is a piece of cake. But when it's time to rally folks together for good, it takes some old fashioned hard work.

I don't want to be remembered as the girl in college who almost died from alcohol poisoning at the Jimmy Buffet concert or as the one who joined a local church for four years at the expense of nearly every relationship or the one who fell for the ugliest and craziest guy on the baseball team. I don't want to be remembered as the one who mishandled her friendship with Kathy Donaway in high school or the mean one who made the girl at work cry or the idiot whose car almost got stolen because she was too lazy to put on "THE CLUB." I learned a lot from those mistakes. I grew up because of them and in spite of them. And I would like to think that out of that came...

The one who would give you the shirt off her back... The one who would pick you up in the middle of the night when you get a flat tire on the side of the highway... The one who would hug you when you need it... The one who would spend hours to cook you a meal that will last thirty minutes...

If I am going to be a list, I want to be the good list, the A list, the BEST OF list, the TOP TEN reasons that SHE WAS A GOOD PERSON list.