Hey you, Mr Fancy Pants. I know who you are. You went from rags to riches. You were so poor that you didn’t have money for school. Life was kind to you. You became a rich man. I worked for your company later on. You were as cruel as life once was to you.

Where was your compassion for those who were once in your shoes?

What did your achievements, your money, and all your numerous accolades–what did they teach your soul?

That’s the story I want to hear.

There’s no judgment from me. Believe me when I say there isn’t.

None of us is perfect. Some of us live with the skeletons of our regrets and mistakes–a past that won’t let go long after its over.

If you were in a position to alleviate the world of its suffering, would you do it? Can we take back the misery that we have caused others? Is there a magic wand to wipe the slate clean? Or do we carry certain soul contracts from one incarnation to the next–never free of the work we never did and the work we never completed? What is the ripple effect of the lesson that life tried to teach us time and time again and that we never learned? How many times will we have to retake the same old exam?

Is there, as the old stories say, a Book of Life that keeps track of our deeds and misdeeds?

Last week, it hit a friend of mine like an ice cold bucket of bricks that he would be turning 50 next year. When the realisation smacked him in the face, he suddenly sobered up and realised that his debauchery days were over. He had lived his life poorly. He had worked till the point of exhaustion. He barely saw his wife–who had conveniently left him for his best friend. He wanted the respect of those around him for all that he had achieved. Instead, he was left with a very real sense that the clock was ticking and that time was running out.

His attempt to make things up to his wife were futile. Her heart was in terrible grief after years of neglect. She would burst into tears each time she saw him and no matter how hard he tried to comfort her, he knew he was only comforting her from the grief he himself had caused–which only made the whole situation even worse.

“A bit of attention would have gone a long way,” his best friend told him. “She isn’t interested in your money or your achievements. She just wanted you.”

His wife was much younger than he was. In her mind, she had wasted her youth, her beauty and her sweetness on a man who had never once expressed how much he valued her as empress of his world. His best friend was everything he was not–attentive, kind and affectionate.

I know both the husband and wife duo personally. I don’t blame her–no matter how ‘terrible’ her actions may seem to the human gaze. Life is short. Too short to spend it married to a man who is married to his work. They were both in the same marriage and yet they might as well have been married to different people.

Nature does not understand morality the way that we humans do. Nature simply is. She is indifferent to the human gaze. She only understands that we are driven by instinct–instincts that will ultimately long to be heard.

We have all been force fed this horrible life-destroying lie that work is everything. Relationships, friendships, even family–all that is secondary. Even being a decent human being is regarded as completely unnecessary. Recently, a friend of mine who runs a business told me how she was stood up thrice in the same day. Once by a client and twice by a friend. All three gave the same lousy excuse–I was busy with work.

Who gave us permission to treat people in this way? Who gave us permission to ghost people, not respond to texts or even erase people and whole chapters from the annals of history?

Who?

We gave ourselves that permission.

We use morality to excuse and to explain our behaviour. Yet, at the same time, we are all highly immoral–bending, twisting and doing away with those very same morals to suit our own personal failures and shortcomings.

We have no respect for the time of others. We use our ego to protect our own interests, hurt others as well as conveniently attempt to get away with it scot free.

But do we actually get away with it scot free?

Someday, we will be called to account.

Some faiths call it ‘karma’, others choose to call it ‘judgment day’.

While we can’t know for sure what will happen on the day when we are called back, I believe there’s only question that will be asked of us when the Council of Elders come together and we go through that life review.

I can imagine, in my mind’s eye, a group of angelic beings and ancestors gathered together as we review our life as though it were a movie in which we were all actors temporarily playing our part before the curtain came down.

“What did you do with your time?” they’ll ask in unison.

“I wasted it,” will be our only response.