One Year Later...

It's true - even this character can be one of the good guys.

I don't want to get into the gory details, but last year at this time, things were not going well for me. My dreams, my aspirations, my career - even my reputation - were on the ropes, being battered senseless by some seriously stone cold people. I wish I were just whining here. Unfortunately, I'm not.

Flash forward to today. Things are much, much better. I'm not exactly living the American dream, but life is promising again. It's a great word, promising. It doesn't mean my life is without struggles. It just means the scales have finally been tipped in my favor.

For the time being.

Truth is, I'm sure more bad things are on the horizon, just like more good things are on the horizon, as well. There's a yo-yo quality to life that none of us can control. We go up. We go down. Before going up again. The fact that there's no real consistency to life doesn't mean there can be no real consistency in life, however.

I'm forty-one now. The more experience I gather, the more I learn how important it is to be one of the good guys. Not a saint, just one of the good guys. The honor really does lie in the struggle, not in the result.

Sounds corny, I know. I myself would have scoffed at such words not so long ago. I now believe those words are true, though. We can be flawed (and, trust me, we're all flawed) but we can at least try to keep our noses clean as we go about our business. So long as we work hard, don't harm others and are honest with ourselves, we can rest assured we've achieved at least some level of success in this world.

Who knows? We may even end up achieving some worldly success, as well.