While it is a given that the unexamined life is not worth living, it is not a given how and what should be examined. It is all too easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight and see moments that I regret. What is not so easy is projecting that if those moments hadn’t occurred I would not be in this current state of failure. The need for reason, for what if’s, for some explanation is an exercise in futility in my current state of mind. I’ve always said that in my battle with TSA and later my union that I lost everything but my integrity, but what does that even mean?

Integrity to me is knowing where the line between right and wrong is located and when you cross it, as humans often do, not losing site or recalibrating the line. Roger Rueff in his play Hospitality Suite speaks about regrets as the essential building blocks of character. I agree, but knowing the difference between regretting an action or decision versus regretting an outcome is like apologizing because you are sorry you got caught. It feels dishonest even if one is sincerely remorseful.

A friend picked me up the other day who feels the burden of my situation weighing heavily on his life. He’s the kind of friend who will respond to a direct plea for help, but in such a stoic way that we both feel diminished by the experience. My plea for the possibility of a shower while his family was away at school and work combined with a mention of hunger led him to show up at the library. He clearly was annoyed and busy and insisted I bring my things rather than keep them parked in the study room. What I received from him was a six ounce plastic cup of meat and potatoes and a small cup of milk. The meal’s price was a lecture about my shortcomings and his reminder that he is only a ‘part-time player’ in my drama.

His mother was a raging alcoholic according to him and an incident during my nasty divorce damaged our friendship and wounded him in a way that triggered the sense memory of his mother. Having signed away everything to my second wife in a fit of sentimentality while I was suffering during my involuntary year off from TSA for union activities, I took the $140 I received in exchange for my $200,000 house and a promise to share in the proceeds when the house sold, and knowing what a terrible irreversible mistake I made, got drunk and gambled the money away. I was inconsolable.

That phone call to my friend, full of regret and remorse and hopelessness redefined me and the definition continues to stick even as he has continued to be my closest friend. So the reminder of that call on what was the end of my first week of homelessness was cold comfort. I don’t regret my reaction to giving so much away, I regret giving it away. That phone call, that cry for help was a mistake.

I can list my sins, I can turn myself in to the Fates as guilty as charged, but what I can’t do is stop trying. So I will continue to examine this life but not turn it into a research project that at the end of the day produces the insight gained from the obvious without any real action plan for the future. I need to live in the future and frankly I’ve got a crick in my neck from looking back and twisted ankles from the potholes I’ve stepped in by not paying attention to the path ahead. I’m not a bad person. I have integrity. That and a desperate email message will get you a cup of meat and potatoes. I can’t eat regret, so I’ll worry about that later and for now figure out how I can earn my own meat and potatoes and move past this sorry chapter. I may fail, but at least I’ll avoid those potholes, or is this essay one of them?