Thursday, October 8, 2009

It's About More Than the Benjamins

The following is the third of an occasional 2009 series looking at how the traditional "Seven Deadly Sins" play in today's world.

For those of you who know me, and by "who know me," I mean "who read my stuff," and by "who read my stuff," I mean "who used to read my stuff when I actually wrote stuff on a regular basis," I hope you will be happy to know that I am OFF the public dole! Yes, I have once again joined the land of the gainfully employed (oddly enough, at the same place that cut me loose last year - go figure). There was much rejoicing done by Baby and The Girls when I delivered the good news, and the weeks and months that have followed have brought more happiness, both monetarily and self-worthily. But it hasn't been all "sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows," as Lesley Gore once sang. Sadly, during this time, I've also gotten a taste of sorrow ... in the form of death.

I've been very fortunate in my life that my experience with death has been limited.

My first real exposure to death was when I lost my grandfather. Pop-Pop was a man who influenced me greatly, and who still influences me today, some 11 years since his passing. Many people say their grandfathers were the best grandfathers in all the land, but mine actually was.

My second exposure to death was when I lost my brother-in-law six years ago. When I married his wife's sister, he and I quickly became brothers-in-arms-in-law, and eventually we became very close friends. His passing came too soon, something I also think about daily.

As for my third experience just a few months ago, it was something quite different. You see, while it was sad to watch my grandfather die at the hands of old age, and while it was sad to watch my brother-in-law die at the hands of disease, neither were as sad as bearing witness to the death of Honor ... at the hands Greed.

(It's been a while. Forgive the length.)

When did we start doing what's best for ourselves instead of doing the honorable thing?

An old friend with whom I had lost touch after my unemployment (who shall remain nameless because I would like her to remain my old friend with whom I am back in touch since my re-employment) recently confided in me that she had cheated on her husband. The affair hadn't been going on long when her husband made the discovery, and after a period of slow progress in rebuilding their relationship and (sadly) a crippling relapse, the storm of uncertainty that surrounded their marriage, while still churning, is beginning to calm, and my friend and her husband seem to be ... finally ... moving in the right direction. Not only have they recommitted themselves to each other, they have returned to the spiritual faith they both abandoned in their youth. Plus, they are engaged in professional marriage counseling as a couple, and they are both addressing their individual psychological issues. It turns out that she is being treated for Depression - a key factor in her missteps - and he is being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - something they didn't realize (nor did I) applied to anything outside of the military - caused by the affair.

My friend's revelation was a stunner. She and her husband have known each other for nearly 20 years. They met as coworkers, became close friends, and then nurtured their relationship through romance and into marriage - a marriage, by the way, that many others admired and respected; a marriage everyone thought was indestructible. It wasn't, and to learn that their marriage could fall victim to this fate is still no greater a shock to this adult than learning the truth about Santa Claus must be to any child. Everything I thought I knew disappeared, and in the months-long wake of the sad news, I still yearn to be intoxicated by the fantasy of a perfect couple, instead of enduring the maddening sobriety that we are all human. When you watch your heroes fall, you become painfully self-aware of your own mortality.

Before I continue, a pair of items. First, I don't condone what my friend did to her husband. While I'm glad their problems seem to be rooted in something psychologically deeper (as opposed to something shallow and thoughtless), that doesn't change the fact that she betrayed her husband - twice. She knows where I stand on this, which is right at the edge of opinion and teetering towards judgment. Second, my friend is lucky that her husband is the man that he is to look past the affairs and see that his wife is suffering from an affliction and needs help, not unlike the way someone with the flu or a broken leg needs help. I've reminded her more than once of this fact, and she has humbly agreed with counted blessings. With that, my housekeeping here is complete.

What does all of this have to do with Greed?

It seems that whenever we bear witness to infidelity, either through the hypnotic moving-picture box in our living rooms or on the pages of the latest scandal sheets in our grocer's checkout lanes, we tend to do one of two things: we either judge the guilty with great condemnation (see: politicians and/or clergymen of all stripes and levels), or we get lost in the salaciousness of it all (see: celebrities ... actual, reality, or otherwise). We might even take pity on some of the parties involved, especially if children become collateral damage.

But there is something we never consider with marital impropriety, something we never discuss when we roll like pigs in the muddy details. It's something that hit me when infidelity touched people I actually know. I came to the sad realization that despite her level of responsibility, despite her husband's level of responsibility for missing the signs of her problems or perhaps contributing to those problems, there were several other people who not only failed this poor woman (and, to a great extent, her husband), but did so intentionally and for their own personal gain.

The first person here is the miscreant she had the affair with. He was fully aware of her marital status when their relationship began, but that didn't stop him from being Greedy - sexually so, but Greedy nonetheless - and taking advantage of this woman in her time of need. I know, I know - lizards like this have been crawling the planet since the dawn of man and lizards; I get that. But what I think we've forgotten, perhaps as a result of being desensitized by the media's frenzied fascination with the pandemic that is infidelity, is that this guy, like the millions before him and the millions to come, made a decision, conscious or not, that went something like this: "This woman is married to someone else but she wants to sleep with me. That defies the core tenet of marriage, so she must be having problems at home. I can either seize this opportunity for a cheap and meaningless thrill, and in doing so set forth into motion a series of events that will ruin the life of her husband and children ... you know, my fellow humans ... or I can tell her that what she is doing to her husband is wrong, and that she should either stay with him completely or leave him completely; nothing in between. Hmmm. Decisions, decisions."

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip.

If your grandmother is about to be hit by an oncoming bus, don't expect this guy to help her. Surely he will say, "Hey, she chose to stand there." Unless, of course, Grandma is a cougar, and then he might consider what his reward would be for saving her life.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip.

The second guilty person here is my friend's girlfriend. This so-called friend, who goes back so far as to have been in attendance at the wedding of the fractured couple, was fully aware of the affair, yet she did nothing to inquire about the state of the marriage, she did nothing to advise on the potential harm my friend would cause her family by cheating, she kept the secret from the husband (whom she knew), and she was fully prepared to act as an alibi for my friend, so that my friend could have a full sleepover with The Miscreant, as opposed to some lunchtime quicky. Why do this to/for a friend? Well, perhaps the girlfriend's Greed was in the form of looking at a future where the husband was out of the picture so more "girl-time" could be spent together. Or maybe her Greed was Greed by attrition - her marriage was in the toilet at the time, so rather than try to improve her own situation, why not drag company down to her level.
Or maybe it was a Greedy combination of both. Regardless, she did not have my friend's best interest at heart.

Sure, you might think that if someone is your best friend, they will do anything they can to support you. You would be wrong. A friend, a true friend, has the guts - check that - the responsibility to step in and say, "Something is not right here. I'm your friend. How can I help you fix this?" If you don't believe me, go to the person you think is your best friend and tell them how cool it would be if you put a gun to your own head so you could blow your brains out. If the response is, "Anything for you, amigo," they aren't your friend, they are an accomplice at best, an accessory at worst. I am happy to say that my friend recognized what a cancer her so-called friend was on her marriage and has since written off The Accomplice.

Finally, the third guilty person here is actually more than one person. It's the other friends my friend THOUGHT she had - those people she considered to be in her "support network" who, upon learning of the affair, never bothered to say, "What can I do to help?" or "How are you two managing?" They simply stopped calling. They simply stopped e-mailing. They simply stopped texting. They simply stopped responding to calls and e-mails and texts, or if they responded, they did so with the written or verbal equivalent of the Heisman Trophy, stiff-arming my friend with retorts that would barely appease the homeless squeegee guy at the busy city intersection. They simply allowed their body language, in coincidental social settings, to scream, "My God, get me as far away from here as possible." The Greed here is the most perplexing - and perhaps the worst - of all.

Unlike the Greed of The Miscreant and The Accomplice, which was predatory and opportunistic, the Greed of The Deserters was not just of the "gimme" variety, it was of the "gimme back" variety. Their actions and inactions have screamed, "Yes, I have broken bread with you. Yes, I have welcomed you into my home. Yes, I have held the hands of your children and you have held the hands of mine. Yes, you have been there for me through good times and bad, but ... not this bad. I mean, really, when I became not just your friend but a part of your life, a part of your extended family, I thought we'd go shopping and gab on the phone and have cocktails and cookouts and other fun stuff. I really wasn't counting on your life spiraling out of control. What if it's contagious? I don't want whatever it is you got, which includes our friendship, so gimme back."

Shakespeare would have called this too tragic.

Perhaps the Greed of The Miscreant and The Accomplice and The Deserters is nothing more than a sign of our times. It seems that the Greed of today goes beyond the usual desire for stacks of cash. The Greed of today represents a shocking combination of conceit and covetousness that doesn't just desire THINGS, it desires everyone around them to exist in their little universe on their unquestionable terms, with complete disregard for anyone who cannot help further whatever agenda they have. While I won't blame social networking sites for this mindset, they certainly contribute to the mentality.

"If you don't interest ME, or if you don't want to look at MY pictures and listen to MY playlists and read MY Tweets and watch MY videos, or if you don't want to GIMME your body or GIMME your time or GIMME your upsides only ... well, then GIMME the keyboard so I can delete you."

I'd rather have the cash than people like that in my life. At least the cash has value.

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