The Scarlet Letter

My wife and I recently watched a docu-series about the hacking of the Ashley Madison website.

If you don't know, the Ashley Madison website allows married men and women to meet, incognito, and have elicit affairs, with no strings attached and no fear of your spouse finding out (or so it seemed). 

In 2015, the site was hacked. All of the adulterers' names were released to the public. 

As you might imagine, a feeding frenzy of self-righteousness ensued. Thousands of people poured over the list, weeding out names of celebrities, YouTube stars, pastors, and neighbors. Marriages were destroyed, careers were ruined, and yes, some people opted to take their own lives rather than suffer the indignation of a scarlet letter.

Some say, "They got what they deserved!" 

I say, "I'm SO glad my drinking days were in the rearview mirror prior to the advent of social media."

We live in an age where society wants to crucify anyone who's ever committed the slightest public faux pas, not just in the recent past, but EVER. Hordes of busybodies, digging through years of social media postings, mining any grievances they can find, then demanding a public apology (followed by an equally public lynching).

There. Is. No. Room. For. Forgiveness.

Personally, I shudder at the thought of ANY of my past misdeeds becoming public knowledge. 

I was a monster in my addiction: A selfish, self-centered, angry, spiteful, lying, thieving, remorseless, abusive, self-loathing criminal. I was a cyclone of destruction, leaving devastation in my path wherever I went. I betrayed friendships and hurt the people I loved. I was a walking disaster... not even a shadow of who my parents raised me to be and the person I was to become in sobriety.

The cretan who wore my skin during those years was not me, it was the addiction. I don't know that person. I don't recognize that person. That person was not me. 

There are people, who to this day, despise me for the selfish actions of that person. Rightly so. Some continue to drag my name through the mud, 25 years later, despite my attempts to make amends.

That's their cross to bear. It's sad.

I'm just glad there was no FaceBook, Insta, or Twitter back then. None of my past humiliation has been immortalized on the inescapable big-screen of social media. 

Thank God for small favors.

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In the final moments of the Ashley Madison series, a woman whose husband took his own life, stated, "We shouldn't be so quick to judge others... We all have a list that we're on, one we wouldn't want anyone to know about."

No truer words have ever been spoken.

Glass houses, people. Glass houses.