The sins of youth

At the weekend I went to spend what I thought would be a pleasant evening in the cinema, watching an interpretation of a classic Oscar Wilde novel, Dorian Gray. The mistake I made was clearly that I had not read the book and was therefore unaware of how utterly terrifying the film was going to be. I spent most of it with my head buried in my jumper and there came a point where I simply didn't want to watch anymore because I knew it could only end badly!

All this, plus other events, got me thinking. I ended up feeling very sorry for poor Dorian at the end of the film. He desperately wanted to undo his sordid past and repented for his sins. However that was not enough because ultimately he couldn't rewrite history and not murder, chop up and sink one of his friends. He was led astray by someone who he thought was a friend and who basically got off scot free while he was left to pay the price in an immensely tragic way.

I suppose the thing is that, whilst an extreme example of paying for your sins, this is really true of real life. Dorian was taught by his so called friend to follow a hedonistic lifestyle, doing what he wanted when he wanted and with no thought of the consequences. This seems to be exactly what most of us seem to do as youngsters. We often pay little regard to the thoughts of others and simply do what we want with no fear of consequences. The trouble is that we cannot undo our actions once we have done them.

I myself certainly made choices when I was younger that I now wish I could undo, mostly whilst strongly under the influence of enough vodka to floor a Rhino. These split second actions that I regreted almost immediately upon waking with a stinking hangover cannot be undone as easily as they were done however. Consequences usually last a lot longer than the hangover as I am sure most of us have learnt to our detriment.

Society teaches us that we should tell the whole truth about our sins but I question who we are really doing this for. Dorian seemed to believe that by being sorry he could somehow fix what he had done but of course it couldn't. If you have hurt someone then being sorry about it does not fix it (especially in Dorians case where the 'someones' in question had ended up dead!). If being sorry about something does not fix it then how on earth can telling the whole truth if that would in the end cause more hurt. Surely the only way to even try to fix our wrong actions is to do our best to be better in the future, not to look for absolution from the corruptions of the past that will never truly come.  

The sins of youth, then, are those actions done with no thought of the consequences, in fact with no real thought at all. We cannot wipe the slate clean, we cannot undo them, but must instead live with the knowledge of them, or the consequences. They are not always entirely our fault, but blame is not necessarily always attributed proportionately to fault. Some people hold on the blame far longer than others - others can truly forgive and forget.

If people are unable to forget the misdemeanours of others, perhaps the phrase 'He who casts the first stone' should be considered. We are all hurt by the Sins of Youth, both our own and others.