What You Did in the Past Could Affect Your Future

The current climate of famous men being brought to task because of inappropriate actions that happened in years past reminds me of a bit of advice that I received from my mother, and that I passed along to my children. The advice was to be careful with what you are doing because your indiscretions might not come back on you today, but they will almost certainly come back to you when you least expect it. 

As the number of famous and powerful men who are being outed due to their inappropriate sexual behavior continues to grow, very few of them are actually denying the claims. Many are simply apologizing for their actions, and are accepting their punishments. As a result, these men are resigning from, or are being fired from their jobs, or are having jobs taken away from them, and are costing themselves millions of dollars. Sadly however, very few of these claims are related to recent actions. Many are from several years or decades ago, and the actions are just now catching up with the men. 

I have often told my children that the things that they do today will affect their lives tomorrow. Whether it is the appearance of an 18-year-old unknown child, a forgotten arrest, or, as in the case of these men, sexual misconduct that was thought to have been overlooked, forgotten or dismissed, these things tend to resurface, particularly as people get rich, famous and powerful. When these situations arise, they must be dealt with, whereas, if they had been dealt with at the time that they occurred, or better yet, had never occurred, the events and actions would not be haunting their perpetrators years later. 

The moral of this is in order to not be caught flat-footed because of a stupid thing from the past; we must try not to do stupid things. The question surrounding Dallas Cowboys Running Back Ezekiel Elliott was whether or not he would be able and allowed to play football again, when it should have been a question of why he keeps getting into trouble, and how to keep it from happening again. These men are in trouble today because of misguided actions from their pasts, but if they had been thinking beyond the moment in time, and looking towards their futures, perhaps they would have been mindful of how their then-present actions would affect their futures.