High and Mighty versus...

Tiger Woods is the latest casualty in a never-ending list of The Fallen.

Here he is, the best at his field, a Billionaire, married to a swimsuit model... the perfect man everybody aspires for... and he gets taken out by what appears to be ego. Money and power goes to their heads. It's called temptation. The devil exists.

The funny thing is that it also happens to a lesser extent to the average guy. I'm sure Tiger Woods gets a million temptations for every one of mine. If you go by percentages, he was bound to fall.

I'm not the best in my field, although I'm very good. I'm not a billionaire, although I do well, I do not know any swimsuits models, although I did score a trophy wife once (or she me) when I was a socially awkward young man. I do understand the lift to the ego that leads to succumbing to temptation, but neither the temptations nor the trophy wife were worth the trouble.

No, I don't know if I'm getting hit by angel or devil, so I play it conservative. My solution has been to limit my exposure and thus minimize temptation. T. Boone Pickens, the oilman, says that the higher a monkey climbs a tree, the more people can see his ass. So I stay in the brush below, doing my thing... I'm pretty high up at work but refuse further promotion, so I get an awful lot done. Every now and then a lady smiles at me... I must remind her of her grandfather... and I ignore it. The love word comes up occasionally and I respond that I love her like a sister. I watch out for games and my favorite word is no. I don't look for "it," I apologize if the wrong impression is taken, and I bolt. And a dear old lady runs my favorite hangout, so I do not flirt with waitresses... it would be like flirting with my mother.

It may seem like a lot of work to constantly monitor and be aware of what I'm doing... to stay in stealth mode... but it's nothing compared to the loss resulting in a fall from grace. God exists too.


- text © 2009 by Willy