Deuteronomy 5:17-21

From the Writing on the Wall series,
Duty:

Faced with the obvious damn thing that you're determined not to do?

Well, thank God and no one else that thinking about it is not as bad as doing it.

Because the underlying truth is that it inevitably will cross your mind. We're not held as accountable for that spontaneous feral experience of odd-placed joy as for our following through with the unexpected (somewhat expected) impulse. Newland Archer understood the folly of justifying one's own situation as the exception to the rule.

Stepping outside and viewing in, it is evident there is only one path.

I am good. I keep my promises. I don't break commandments except 1 through 3. Yes, hell-bound but not for having transgressed against my neighbor. If I stretch it, I can say the reason for my respecting fellow humans is my respect for commandments 1 through 3. Just not in the way He meant it.

________________, however, so I'm apparently lying about quashing fellow humans with whom I have no standing commitments.

That involved yet another man. And the other one altogether, who played the accompanying friend, was half in love with me but like all my best loves respected that I was not free.

How is it possible that there is any arguing whether "thou shall not murder" includes such a grotesque and oft-necessary procedure? Another case of the obvious. Grim, heartbreaking, and dumped into the internal pile of equivalent regrets — all the past loves, which are always Current Love Singular — because I choose to think of all time concurrently.

Yes, it's all choices.
We do a lot of stupid things all the time.
We just have more hope than sense.

I haven't made the same mistake twice.