I’M IN CHARGE OF MY LIFE

I keep getting told by friends and family, even the latest rector of my small historic Episcopal church for 50 years, “Do this, do that, do the other.”

I have friends who are unhappy in their own family situations who I call “dependant” people. They glom onto you, encourage friendship, spend time with you, use you for what they can get, but then things fizzle out. Where is gratitude for kindness, generosity and a good heart? Often nowadays nowhere to be found.

I was brought up by parents who told me one of the most important virtues in life was being grateful, thankful to good people in one's life and to God, showing appreciation for all the good things around us. But gratitude is not something dependant people show these days. Once they've used you up, out the door without a thank-you.

Oh well, the story of life.

Even my own local Episcopal rector is an impersonal, arrogant, haughty man who speaks the speak on Sunday, as it were, or tries to, but there is no genuine friendliness, no spiritual reach-out or gratitude in his demeanor or actions. It's all just going through the motions to keep things and people in line with his daily-worn church collar as some signal that "I'm better than you." No wonder church attendance has dropped substantially and people are going to church elsewhere.

But the question remains: If you are in charge of your life, why do things fizzle out with friends and people you like? Many reasons:

• Two types of people: Those who take charge and those who are dependant.

It is not a man-woman thing. There are men and women who take charge, as there are men and women who are dependant.

Certainly, single moms whose fathers of their children have abandoned them are in charge, but also dependant, because in that situation you cannot possibly do it all on your own.

• In our society, we have preferred intact families, man-woman-children, but the fact is that most couples today live together out of marriage and increasingly more children born recently are being raised by single moms whose fathers  abandoned them, are in dispute over their marriage, or grandparents.

• Red light: Divorce in America is pandemic. More than half of all marriages now breaking up within a decade. Why? We are a church-going country with all faiths in every community. So why so much divorce? Why so much adultery? Why so much spouse abuse? Why so much court time wasted on child-support and visitation issues?

And why do we wonder why we have so many youth problems when adults –- their parents –- have screwed up their childhood by fighting and forgetting the priority, which is the children, not themselves?

I say to these idiots, grow up and get back to basic priorities of marriage and family. If you made a marriage commitment and had children, stop fooling around with other people, committing adultery, screwing up your children’s heads with extra-marital foolishness.

Hopefully every man loves a woman and vice versa. But there are boundaries.

If a man or woman is married, they’re off limits to others seeking a romantic relationship. But if a married man flirts with a married or single woman, oops. Or if a married woman flirts with a married or single man, oops. Recipe for disaster, particularly if vulnerable children are involved.

This is happening too much in our society.

I know because I’m a divorced single man for ten years and can recount hundreds of occasions where married and single women flirted and tried to be dependant on me for this and that. It’s a struggle for any man who likes a lovely woman, regardless of her marriage status.

This is not to disparage women who have shared their marital grievances with me, or friendships we had because we liked the same food, music, outdoor activities, or whatever.

But I’m a single man. I’m in control of my life. And unhappily married dependant people always turn out the same: Unhappy, dependant, unhappy, dependant, and the relationship often eventually sours because there is no real commitment. They are dependant and just looking for someone to take care of them financially and emotionally. But it doesn't usually work out because no one likes to be used.

You meet an attractive person who tells you they are unhappily married. You are attracted but don’t want to have an affair if you are a person with morality -- or you do if not –- but either way, things eventually blow up for whatever reason.

The truth is, one shouldn’t develop a friendship or get into a relationship in these circumstances because it is a recipe for disaster and heartbreak.

A dear friend married to a doctor out West told me as a man whose heart was recently broken by a lovely woman I stupidly fell in love with but dumped me: "Matters of the heart can be so painful. Do not invest your emotions nor commit your loyalties to any woman who doesn't deserve to be as happy as you can make her. Truly. Think on it: Be ever so careful where you invest what you have to offer that the rest of your life may be free of the agony of 'having loved and lost.'"

But divorce and unmarried live-in relationships are a pandemic societal problem everywhere these days.

C. S. Lewis, in his wonderful small book, “The Abolition of Man,” quotes Cicero: “There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can.”

Perfect description of my Episcopal rector, whose injustice was unkindness and arrogance to me and our family when my mother, head of the church altar guild and who he called "patron saint" of the church, was dying. We had attended that church for 50 years, but this rector drove us out.

A true definition of valor and friendship, Lewis observed: “We all have instincts, People say different things, so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.”

So if you lead with your heart, you are true fodder. If you are a cold pragmatist doing for whatever objective or dependency, you take advantage of the person with a heart.

This causes injury and is an injustice, as C. S. Lewis proclaimed.

The partial answer, I believe, is in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

“Do all things without murmurings and disputings; that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. ” (Philippians 2:14-16 KJV)