Forgetting You!

"Why? Why can't I get back the life I had before?" Jason complained, sitting in the office of his former business partner. "I have done what many wise people said I should. Yet I still can't find my way back to the life I had before."

"I don't think I can answer that the way you want me to," Paul replied, shocked to see him after what he had done.

"But you were my best friend. You knew my ins and outs," Jason said.

"You want someone who can tell you the truth and make it effective."

"What do you mean?" he cried in frustration.

"While growing up, you were always encouraged to face the truth. We were taught that truthfulness would not protect us from reality. But lies will. You lived your life without regard to anyone and didn't heed my words of wisdom. Or anyone else's," Paul refreshed his memory painfully.

"Right now, I am so lost I will take anything."

"Well," Paul said with a heavy sigh. "I know someone who knows the truth that you can't seek revenge from."

"Give it to me," Jason demands.

Paul grabbed a mirror from one of the desk drawers that his wife often used to apply her makeup and handed it to him.

Jason glared at him with furled brows and released in anguish, "That's cruel, brother!"

"The truth usually is, brother," he stressed. "Only you know why your life is in a mess right now. The truth is inside of you. If you dig deep enough and want it bad enough, you will find it. If you can't, then ask life. You can't seek revenge on life without harm to yourself as you did to me and the others who tried to encourage truth's value."

Glancing at his watch, Paul continued, "I am meeting a client in ten minutes. Let me know if you find the sincerity you are seeking or what life said."

Sadness raced through Jason faster than a blink. Agony pushed him forward, swallowing his disappointment, "You were my only hope."

"Your enemy must never be hope for you, Jay," Paul pressed. "You made me that you when you deliberately bankrupted our business, stole everything, and flung me back into the gutter where we first started more than ten years ago."

"You should thank me because you have risen bigger and better. You are more successful now than when we were in business."

Swaying his head east to west, "That is because I didn't forget where we came from," Paul defends.

Realization struck Jason, shivering in torment. He wailed, "I had to forget the pain and poverty. I couldn't carry all of that baggage with me into a better life."

"And that's why you are stuck where you are. You have forgotten your humble, honest, and clean beginnings. You are so ashamed of where you came from, your start, your roots; you don't even glance back when you arrived at your destination!"

The pain sliced through him like a sharp knife through an onion. Teary-eyed, "You had forgotten about what happened to Lot's wife when she looked back?" he argued.

"She had all of her family with her. You left all of yours behind in poverty while you lived like a King."

"It's hell back there. I had a right to stay in heaven!"

"But you are not in heaven. And your reign was a short one."

"I will get back to glory. A just man will rise and fall seven times seven."

"You aren't a just man," Paul reminds.

"I will find my way back to glory," he insisted, heading towards the door.

"No, you won't," Paul called out before he shut the door.

He paused at the exit, slowly eased around.

Paul threw at him, "You have forgotten where you came from, so you have nothing to restrengthen you while you are down. Nothing to re-enforced you. There is nothing to remind you or refresh your memory of who you were. Therefore you have nothing to aid in your restart."

These words continued slicing through him.

"When we forget our origin, we will forget ourselves. If you can't remember yourself, you won't recall anyone or the important things in life. Poverty shouldn't define who we are or were. You came from a loving family. You killed the roots, so there is nothing to aid in regrowth. Life owes you nothing. Boy, you owe life a lot!"

Tears flowed from Jason's eyes like a dam broken by heavy flood rains; as he staggered back in, sat down, and through the tears, he complained, "It's hard, okay. I couldn't hold on to the past."

"But that's where you left your roots. You will need it now to move forward. Without them, growth isn't attainable."

"So that's how you rebounded?" he said, weakened by the reality of the truth.

"Yes," Billy agreed in relief. "If you can find your way back, don't kill the roots again. They make regrowth achievable."

"Will they forgive me?"

"Go and find out! I hope they will still remember the story about the Prodigal Son!"

Forgetting your roots is forgetting YOURSELF!

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoy it.