Acceptance?

I know several people who have moved their families across states because of human beings shooting up and shitting in their yards or on their porches and patios.

Is acceptance really the right thing to do? For the betterment of society? For the future? For our kids or grandkids? For example, when you see human shit in a parking lot, should you just shrug and say to yourself, “It’s just the way things are?” Or as some would like, should you sympathize or empathize with people who are living in the streets, 90% of whom would find jobs within a month if their benefits and methadone and crack pipe stores were no more. Why are we rewarding this now and cancelling the critics, the people just speaking reality?

I’m repeatedly told that acceptance is the key to happiness. And I agree to some extent. I have to remember that I should put every ounce of my confidence in God, and zero confidence in people. I get that. But just accepting bad or even worse, animalistic, behavior. Is that really the right thing to do? Or would the world be a better place for our kids if we called people out on their bad behavior. If we expected more. Demanded more. Sort of the way we might think of parents in the past. Is it so awful to instill respect in our next generations? People are always going to act like shits, but let’s call them out. I say let’s make MORE rules. And let’s build more walls and more fences - electric shock kind - to keep the fuckers that shoot up and play grocery cart games with their buddies all day and trash and shit in parking lots that people who actually work and contribute to this world have to use. Better yet, let’s bring back those huge, concrete, gray institutionalized buildings and lock them in with no drugs. Let them DT themselves to death. I guarantee that in about a month, most will miraculously walk out just fine.

I wrote this poem (?) in 2007, some 15 years ago now, and it reminds me that I’ll obviously never be the person in the title, so the harshness above is just me, and here, I get it God, I accept that.

What Will Be

When the one thing your chemistry has craved since its inception eludes you,
When the movie screen inside your forehead plays the same scenes each day and into each year,
When you know, with less years ahead than behind, that you are the same person you were on the playground,
The road ahead is perfectly clear.

The vision is a comfort, because you know yourself and your heart and soul and your mind
But it feels heavy with the burden of the still years of an unwavering need.
It will keep inviting itself and celebrating in otherwise happy moments
Reminding you of who you are and who you always will be.

You stand by your convictions and have recently become friends with your flaws.
You are proud of the good things you’ve done and you’ve learned from the bad.
You like your company and you like your dreams.
But, in the end, nothing matches the one thing you never had.

So, you’ll stand at the window looking out at your life’s last corner
Dreaming the dream that was never meant to be
Imagining how life would be different
If your reflection wasn't the only thing to see.