Happy With No Regrets

Yesterday, two people died in Ottawa, one because he was a member of the armed forces and the other because he had an ideology that didn’t fit in with this country. There is a young man who is on trial for murdering his parents; it seems that the voices in his head were controlling him at the time of the murders. There was a guy at the second hand store today that was upset with me for looking at his truck and smiling. Yesterday, my buddy asked some kids that were parked in his alley eating their lunch if they wouldn’t mind taking their garbage with them when they left. They said no problem and an hour later we came back to see the alley littered with garbage. There must have been a misunderstanding.

All of those people mentioned weren’t always bad people. They are not necessarily bad people now; they do have some behavioural problems though. I can’t imagine they were always like they are now. I hope they had happy childhoods, but you never know.

When I was a little guy, I had a happy childhood. I would play with my brother and my friends. I went to school and although I didn’t stand out, I think I was in most ways a normal kid. I had food to eat, juice to drink and every now and then I would get candy. Santa was always good to me and the Easter Bunny never missed a year. Yes, my brother was a real bastard at times and I think my mom and dad didn’t love me as much as they did him. My clothes were hand-me-downs and I was terrible at sports. My grandmother called me “solemn Kenny”, but I didn’t think of myself as solemn, I was just smiling inside.

Today on a walk to the store, I saw two little kids, a brother and a sister playing in piles of leaves. They were tossing them in the air, making “leaf angels” and they took turns burying each other. In short, they were having a great time. Just a little further up the street, there was a toddler playing in a small pile of leaves while his mom did the raking. I don’t think the little guy knew what to do exactly, but he was pretty sure that leaves were fun. The fun stopped three houses further on where a woman with a sour face was raking the leaves in her yard. How can the same thing generate such different emotions?

I am sure that the people mentioned in the first paragraph had good childhoods. They may not have had enough money, or even enough food, but kids don’t know any better and they make do with what they are handed in life. We should all take notice and act accordingly. They would have played in the leaves, played with their friends and however their parents treated them, that was love. We all start in the same place and our choices are what make us grow into the people we are.

Eventually, if given a chance, all of those people will grow into old men who will look longingly at the kids playing in the leaves while walking to the store. They hopefully won’t remember the bad times and maybe they will regret some of the things they have done getting to where they are. Maybe they will be like me, happy with no regrets.