One crime has to be concealed by another. – Seneca
What are you willing to do to conceal your wrong-doing? How many crimes are you willing to commit to hid the first one? It will keep going until you are caught or until you die. Is that any way to live a life?
What does that mean?
This is a quote about actions and their consequences. When you do something wrong, it doesn’t just go away. It doesn’t disappear or otherwise hide, unless you do other things, and those are also wrong. The chain of wrong-doing to conceal the initial crime will continue until you are eventually caught.
The other alternative is to do nothing, and hope that the initial crime goes unnoticed for a sufficiently long time as to be forgotten or considered irrelevant by the passage of time. And the waiting is the hardest part, or so I am told.
The quote is informing us, in a round-about manner, that it is best not to start down that path, as it only ends when you die (of old age or…) or when you are caught. By then, you will have added more than a few extra crimes, solely for the purpose of hiding the initial crime. That’s not very bright thing to do, is it?
Why is not starting down the path of crime important?
In this day and age, where every picture on the internet is forever, every tweet will outlast a plastic bottle in a landfill, you will always be waiting for someone to put things together and catch you.
Those who commit crimes will leave clues, and people will find them. Eventually, someone will add things up, and go looking to find the perpetrator of the crime.
Would you like to spend the next few years (or longer) looking over your shoulder? What would you be willing to do to conceal your crime even more? How many crimes would you be willing to do? Where would you draw the line? What kind of life would that be?
Or would you go “full thug” and just live a life of crime, knowing that eventually it will all fall down? I can’t imagine any of those options being all that interesting, do you? Yes, there are those to whom this does appeal, but for most of us, it’s best not to even commit that first crime.
Where can I apply this in my life?
Well, this section should be short. If you don’t commit the first crime, you won’t then have to keep on committing crimes to conceal it. Nor will you have to wait and wait, wondering if someone has figured it out yet, and if they are closing in on you. Simple, right?
But what about the minor things? Not real crimes, nothing they’d throw you in jail for, but the little lies, and the little cheats? What about the little things you may have borrowed for a little while, but forgot to give back? What about those things?
If someone asks you if you did ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ may be), do you tell the truth, or do you lie? If you lie about it, you only prove the quote correct. And when they come back and ask additional question, you either have to lie some more, or do something else to distract them. And so it begins, right?
So, in short, this quote is an advertisement for proper ethical and moral behavior, right? While everyone will draw the line between proper behavior and that which is not proper in a slightly different place, I believe we can all agree that the line exists.
The same goes for criminal behavior. There is a line, although we may have some disagreements on what is or isn’t a crime, or under what circumstances a normally criminal behavior is acceptable. However, we all know what we consider proper, improper, and criminal. And the point of the quote is to remind us what happens when we cross the line.
Some of you stay well within the first line. For those who spend time in either of other zones, you might want to consider what you do, and how you respond to inquiries. What are you willing to do, and what are you unwilling to do to continue covering things up?
In short, are you willing to start doing the right thing, and only the right thing? Or are you willing to take the walk down the path of improper behavior or even the path of crime? Is this something you have ever thought about, or do you just do it out of habit?
This blog is about examining your life, and reflecting on what you have done. Have you ever sat down and determined what you will or will not do, and under what circumstances? If you make those decisions now, when things are quiet and you can think it through, you are far more likely to make the right choice when faced with the opportunity to commit a crime.
From: Twitter, @OprahsQuotes
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/luciusanna154998.html
Photo by Alan Cleaver
