The Smallest of Things

I have been stewing on this post since the Summer of 1994.  Naturally, not literally this blog post since to my knowledge blogs didn't exist way back in the day of dial up internet and 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy disks.  But the events I'm going to describe have troubled me for more than 20 years, and I've finally decided to put them down on paper, so to speak.  My story is off topic really.  It has nothing to do with being Mormon or gay, except in the most tangential way which I will try to pull together at the end.

I doubt this will be read by many, if anyone.  Like all of my posts, I'm writing it for me.  More or less as a way to talk to myself and express my feelings.  If someone actually does read it, and further still perhaps finds it interesting, all the better.  But that isn't the point.

It's the summer of 1994.  I have just finished my first year of law school.  My school offered three week summer courses with the University of Salzburg law school.  I decided that it was an opportunity I just couldn't pass up.  So I borrowed an extra $5k on my student loans, threw caution to the wind and went for it.

I flew from San Francisco to Atlanta where I had a six hour layover.  The next leg of my journey was from Atlanta to Orly Airport in Paris.  As I was standing in line to through security at the international gates, a gentleman approached me.  He asked if I would mail an envelope for him from Paris.  I agreed to do it for him so he gave me a standard sized letter envelope and a dollar or two for postage.  I can't remember what reason he gave, but I don't recall being particularly worried about it.  And at that time in my life, I was something of a wilting flower.  I couldn't say no to people.

Now, let's remember that 1994 was a much simpler time.  I could still walk right up to the gate when picking someone up at my medium-sized hometown airport.  This was all pre-9/11.  Yes, terrorism existed in the world.  But it was "over there" in the Middle East mostly, not in the good old US of A.  In fact, I don't recall feeling even the slightest bit of nervousness about traveling in Europe.  It didn't even cross my mind that there might be any danger.  So, when the gentleman approached me, I wasn't enthusiastic about doing it, but I also didn't see it as something particularly hazardous.

Here's the thing.  I never mailed the letter.  I thought about it several times.  Wish I could say that I knew why I didn't.  I believe on some level I thought perhaps it just wasn't a good idea considering that I didn't have any clue what was in the envelope or who gave it to me.  Strangely enough, I think it was mostly because I was so shy and reserved that I didn't want to go to a post office or ask someone where to get stamps.  I laugh now, especially considering the career I was pursuing. 

Whatever the combination of reasons, I hauled that letter and the money he gave me around Europe for a month.  Then I brought it home, where it sat for years.  In fact decades.  I would periodically run across it and wonder.  All that time, I never did anything with the money and I never opened the envelope.  Partly because I didn't want to know the impact of what I failed to do, and partly because I wanted to respect the sender's privacy.  I finally destroyed the letter, again never having opened it.

My failure to keep my commitment has haunted me.  Still haunts me.  Perhaps it was nothing, or at least a thing not so very significant.  On the other hand, maybe it was major.  Perhaps it was a letter of acceptance for a job or for school or for some other life changing event.  Maybe it was emergency money for a close friend or relative.  Perhaps it was an important document that had to be somewhere and couldn't wait for overseas mail.  There are many, many things it could have been.  Some great, some insignificant.  But whatever it was, it was important enough to him to bring it to the airport.  

We never know what the impact of our choices will be, on ourselves and on others.  I look back at my life and realize that the failure it has become is not really the result of a few major decisions, although there have certainly been several that have had an out-sized influence.  Rather, it's the accumulation of choices great and small, most of which have been consistently poor, that has brought me to where I am today.  What's more, I've learned the magnitude of the impact of some of my decisions on those around me.  In a few cases, that impact was life altering for others in ways I would never have believed or even considered.

I've gone through life with what I see now as reckless abandon.  I refused to take the hard path and accept my homosexuality for what it was until it was much too late.  The hundreds of opportunities missed and dishonesties have hurt me and those around me in unknown, and probably unknowable, ways.  While I'm not so self loathing as to fail to excuse childhood and youthful misjudgments, there is simply no excuse for the way I lived my life once I reached adulthood.

I don't really know what I'm trying to accomplish by writing this.  Perhaps there is nothing more to gain than finally telling the story in the hopes of moving on from the guilt associated with it.  But for better or for worse, whether something is accomplished or nothing at all, there it is.