The scars of life.

I recently joined a Facebook group about the place I was born and brought up in. How strange it was to see some of the photographs from the times when I was at school. I even went as far as to get my hands on a picture of myself performing in the Boy Scout Gang Show. 

It is indeed strange to see those pictures and to remember the days depicted. The hopes we had, the dreams and the expectations of life to come. I many ways I was fairly fortunate in that I did not at that stage in life have very many hopes or aspirations. 

I found school days a difficult time and had little hope of ever being anything very much. 

A friend of mine was being visited by his grandson. His grandson sat looking at him and said to him. "Grandad you are the same as God."  My friend not being a religious man at all wondered where that thought had come from. "How do you think I am like God?" he was hoping he was going to be told he was kind and loving. "You are both old," said the young boy.

The older we get the more we become aware of the ageing process. The exuberance of life starts to diminish.  The young and youthful faces look nothing like the one we face in the morning mirror. Reluctantly we acknowledge the ageing mask. There is no escaping the marks of life.

Everything we do every experience we have had is registered upon as surely as if we had visited a tattoo artist, which more and more are now doing. 

To a large degree, the pattern of life and the picture that emerges is down to ourselves. If we did go to a tattoo artist it would be us that would select the image to emblazoned upon us. 

In life, it is we who select what we will become and how we will be seen by others by the choices we make and the actions we perform. There is no reason for us to go through life thoughtlessly, to let chance shape what we become. That would be like going to a blind tattoo artist.

Whether we emerge from the scrapes of life beautiful or ugly is our sole responsibility. 

A man on being told something similar began to feel guilty that he had been avoiding paying his due taxes. He wrote to the Inland Revenue enclosing a cheque and a note saying, "I cannot sleep at night knowing that I have been cheating on my taxes. Please find the enclosed cheque for £1000 if I still cannot sleep I will send you the rest."

At least there was one who was trying to make sure the end result and how people saw him would not all be bad. 

Have a good day and may today not leave to many scars.