James Etheridge

In some way, shape or form everything that we do, good or bad, comes back to us.  I’ve made a ton of mistakes, both small and huge. Regrets? I have a lot. I have heard people say that they have no regrets and that everything they have done in their life helped to shape who they are today. I can understand that, but there are many things, a couple of big ones in particular, that given the chance I would go back and change.

That, as we all know, is not possible. What’s happened has happened and there is nothing we can do about it now. All we can do is focus on the time ahead of us, try not to make the same mistakes twice and take responsibility and accountability for our actions.

Testosterone hit me like a ton of bricks somewhere between my seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays. I was wild as a buck up until the time I was about twenty-five. I worked pretty hard and played really hard. Looking back, it is a wonder I survived and managed to avoid incarceration. I was living the Bob Seger song Against The Wind almost word for word.

At one point a girl I was dating told me of the group I hung out with, “You’re better than them.” Deep down, I understood what she meant but refused to listen to her. It took me several years to realize that she was exactly right. Today I consider it some of the best advice I was ever given in my life.

I got into some pretty serious trouble twice in the mid-to-late Seventies. After the second time, I decided enough was enough. I had met someone I knew was very special. I decided she was the most important thing in my life and that I needed to make some serious changes in my behavior and the company that I kept. I suppose we all have reached a crossroads like that at some point in our lives. I began disassociating myself with the crowd I ran with, settled down and got married.

But sometimes, things that happened in the fearlessness, thoughtlessness and carelessness of our hormone-fueled youth can come back to haunt us decades later. It can be humiliating, embarrassing and depressing when we are confronted with it and faced with the overwhelming feeling that we have let our loved ones, our friends and ourselves down. All we can do is hold onto the hope that what was done in a moment of stupidity in our misspent youth does not define the lives we have led or who we are today. We can only try to rectify those actions in our hearts and consciences and keep on going, as the song says, “against the wind.”