Click images for desktop size: Peter Jackson's Version:King KongSomeone asked me why I felt the need to justify or explain myself when I explained why I got Shelby, my puppy.
As usual, this confused me. I thought murder got justified and wars, they get justified and explained away.
Big things that effect the world or the big justification: the lies we tell ourselves.
The excuses we pave our way to sleep the big long sleep of the guilty and the damned.
I'm as guilty as anyone. Enough Catholic guilt to keep a drunken bishop busy for a week at least.
But I don't justify myself. When you can justify things, it just leads to some pretty big cruelty.
A guy who gets comfortable justifying himself can excuse the petty lies in himself, he can excuse just about anything and say it was for this or for that. Hell, look we're justifying a war and I'll be damned if I'm put in the category of some smug jerk who can kill thousands and claim he was doing it for my good.
Or the sort of guy who can mug 90 year old women on social security day, or the kind of creep who sells crack to kids because if he didn't do it someone else would.
All these guys are of a cloth to me and that cloth is their burial shroud.
Me and my puppy don't need to be any part of that.
People see you in ways different then you see yourself. When you find someone who sees you the same way you see yourself and loves it, that's when peaceful understanding begins.
It doesn't happen much. For some people I don't think it happens at all.
Sometimes when you meet someone and you're able to be articulate enough and in the right light with the right sounds in the background you can give them a glimpse of a tiny part of your soul.
That glimpse is so dazzling that we think we are in love. We are in love, not just infatuation.
Problem is that love's just not enough for most people.
So, I don't justify my love of dogs. They see my soul and I see theirs.
We get along ok.
I like to have a dog in my life, and I like to be part of their life.
I know what the Belgian Shepherd is like and they know what I'm like.
We get along better than ok.