We all like to believe that we are the special one who will get away with it. We will violate our principles and values, do the things we know we shouldn’t and foolishly believe that because we haven’t been exposed, that we got away with it. We like to think we’re slick until we get stuck with all our problems.

The thing is that sometimes we do get away with things we know are wrong because we are the only ones that are supposed to be holding ourselves accountable, or we fly under the radar to those we are accountable to. It’s all fine and dandy as long as we know that others cannot see what shameful human beings we have been, that is until things go horribly wrong.

It can be something as simple as the turn of the steering wheel, or a pipe burst or a simple mistake on the job that turns into a larger issue. All of a sudden, a closer look is taken at your life and all of the things you tried to hide bubble to the surface.

Say you made a dumb mistake driving and hit someone else’s car. Best case scenario, nobody was hurt and you’re at fault for damages. But unbeknownst to everyone else, you haven’t been managing your money well. You have been spending money on everything but what’s important and you paid for the cheapest insurance there was and now you owe someone who was just minding their own business a whole lot of money that you don’t have.

Maybe you become a financial burden to others, having to borrow money to cover the cost of the damages you caused because you were texting and driving or just not paying attention to the road.

Maybe you’ve been living like a scoundrel and frequenting the bars or clubs and you have nothing to show for your spending but large bar tabs and hangovers, and now that you’re in a tight spot, you suddenly become aware of the fact that you never really got away with it.

Maybe a pipe burst in your house, and you knew there was a problem but you avoided it for whatever reason you conjured up as an excuse for avoiding your responsibilities and now your house is flooding, you have nowhere to go but your mom’s house and can barely afford the repairs.

You let a small problem grow into a nightmare because you would rather spent your time watching Netflix and chilling, and an issue that could’ve taken you a couple of hours to fix has erupted, literally, into a huge issue that will take days of your time and a substantially greater sum of money to fix.

Maybe you were on the job and you’ve been a slacker for a long time and you’ve been equally lazy outside of work and you make a mistake that has severe consequences and in a moment’s notice, your performance is under review and suddenly you’re out of a job.

You go home and realize that your mediocre job was the only thing that you had going on for you because you wasted all your time doing self-indulgent things and now you wish that your time hadn’t been used so unwisely. You don’t have any time to build a new skill because the rent is due, and you don’t have a good reference for your resume because you totally blew it being a skater.

Maybe you’ve been being a horrid person and doing things to betray others, lying to them or failing to be responsible for yourself and one day, you get exposed. You lose all the people who cared about you because you were too selfish and self-indulgent to care until it all came crashing down around you.

Once you’re exposed, your reputation sinks along with your spirits and soon nobody will trust you or want to be around you if they know better. You sit with regret and realize how important those people were to you but you had to go and mess it up because you had no self-control. It feels cool when you get away with it, but the guilt and torment experienced afterward is never worth it.

Don’t wait until things get hard to do the right thing. When shit hits the fan, the last thing you want is a bunch of immoral or irresponsible baggage to add to the stress of the situation. Life is hard enough as it is, and when something terrible happens, you don’t want additional worries to compound the situation.

It can be hard to be good and do the right thing, but it’s harder dealing with the consequences of poor decisions. Unexpected things happen in life, its unavoidable, but its much easier to deal with when you’ve been living right.

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