Battling On

I am relentless in my pursuit of goodness. Every day I resolve to be good, yet every day I always - in some small way - fail. Each morning, as I leap from my bed, I make a promise to myself to do only good things today; to spread only love and happiness around me; to banish all negative thoughts; to smoke less; drink less, exercise more.

What happens? I forget all about it, that's what. Having first convinced myself that only good things will come to me if I'm good myself, I waiver and buckle at the slightest setback and this subsequently causes me to start behaving badly. Sometimes I only do a small thing that's bad – maybe two or three cigarettes over my daily quota, or perhaps an extra three fingers of whisky, late into the night. Other times, I conduct myself with such alarming depravity and malice aforethought, that this causes my heart to sink when I realize that once again, I have lost the principles by which I should live. Why am I so weak?

I can remember a single occasion when I was about four years old and my mother was chiding me for doing something naughty. "You have turned from a nice little boy, into a bad little boy," she told me. A casual, throwaway comment for an harassed young mother to make, perhaps, but it cut me to the quick. I remember retreating behind the sofa to contemplate this new revelation. What shocked me at the time about that particular remark was that it was complete news to me that a person could change from being good to being bad. I distinctly recall being dismayed that I was no longer 'good' because I had – until then – assumed that my 'goodness' was unassailable. I had, somewhat naively perhaps, been under the misapprehension that the world was divided into two types: The bad, and the good. My brother was undoubtedly bad and I, on the other hand, was undoubtedly good.

This news that I had somehow strayed across the Rubicon was devastating. What perplexed me most about this was that I made the assumption that once the crossing had been made, there was no going back. I was now a bad person, and therefore doomed to a life of evil; a life of weakness, iniquity and shame. Ever since then, I've been struggling to smash the curse. Yet failing.

Is this is what is meant by "Life's rich battle"? If so, I need a stronger army. Perhaps that's what the Salvation Army was created for? Oh, to be a Pilgrim!