Could That Ever Be Me?

Introduction

This started off with me thinking about how people can be totally selfish. Someone once said to me, "A friend is just someone you can use and take advantage of".

In another incident, someone I knew beat a guy up. I asked him why he did it, and he said, "It wasn't my fault, he shouldn't have been there. If he hadn't been there, I wouldn't have beat him up".

Some people take delight in hurting others and making their lives difficult.

I have always found this level of selfishness very difficult to comprehend.

Why Do I Think That?

Whenever I do things, I always consider others and the effect my actions have on them. Sometimes I miss things and make mistakes, but in my mind I draw imaginary maps and structures and will hopefully point out pitfalls and issues, as well as the potential successes I will have and how they will benefit me and others that I might touch.

We look back on things we have done and the effects they have had, whether good, bad or indifferent, and we learn from these, and all these things build a map of our life, to hopefully help us in moving forward and making tomorrow better than today.

If we look at our mind maps, we can see many paths and roads running back in time that are still with us today. Friendships, jobs, family, music we listen to, books we read and re-read.

Some roads come to an end, but they are still in our minds, and why they came to an end may have taught us how to run our lives better today.

Joining Vocal turned out to be life-changing for me. I have learned to write and believe in my writing thanks to the support and friendships that I have built there. One result of that is the twelve books I have published on Amazon, and I am particularly proud of my collaboration with Angie Livingstone, The Glittering Fox, which has resulted in significant royalties and with Christmas coming, that may increase even more:

This is where all this started, and the real writer, Paul Campbell, enjoyed it but said I had a very sick mind:

This is one of the roads on my life map that I believe will run and run, and I love it when I can share it with others.

Then I come back to the title question of this piece.

Could I be selfish and use others?

I do believe I am the most important person in my life, bar none, because I always need to be in top form if I am to be around for others.

I don't think I can be selfish, I won't be used, but I will not use others.

My relationships with friends and colleagues make up other roads and tracks on my map.

Five years ago, I became a grandad, and my granddaughter Alexis Leia (her parents, Kirsty, my daughter, and Mark are Star Wars fans) is now a wonderful girl, although she dictates where we eat when we meet for a meal:

My daughters, granddaughter and family are another road on my life map which is going to keep running.

Then I reconnected with friends (via my sister Yvonne), I hadn't seen since the 1970s, and I recorded in these two stories:

That is one more road on my unmappable mind map, which again is going to go on and on.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading and giving me your support and you are on the road going forward on Vocal with me, and I hope we never lose our way.