We must always guard our rights as individuals

By Compiled by Times staff writers

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 7, 2000

Life is a journey, a long and winding road filled with beautiful vistas and unforeseen twists. If you are paying attention to the big picture and are not just focusing on your own day-to-day pain and glory, many of life's lessons reveal themselves. If you have ever said, "If I knew then what I know now," you have just learned one of the lessons of life.

The Citrus Times is asking people around Citrus County what they have learned about life, and each week we will share their wisdom.

Michael Pitts was born in Bermuda 58 years ago. He lived in New York for 12 years and has been a resident of Inverness for the past 26 years. A corrections officer, Mike has been married for 38 years and has four children and two grandchildren.

Here is what life has taught Mike:

One cannot live in the past. To live in the past is to deny the natural progression of one's future. The journey into the future can be painfully full of negatives.

The lessons of life are many and in some cases difficult. If we are not willing students learning patience, courage, forgiveness of others and ourselves, we make for ourselves a difficult path in life.

Most human beings are followers. I guess that is the natural order of life. The unfortunate aspect of this is, one inhibits one's own thought process, therefore, allowing others to think for us.

Acceptance of a deity, regardless of one's affiliation, has to rate high in one's life. There are those who refer to the deity as a crutch. For me, it's a crutch I welcome and accept.

True, honest friends are very rare. Motivation for friendships in many cases is self-serving.

I have learned that if one chooses to be a parent, that choice can and should be the most important job assignment one can have and do, also the most enjoyable and self-satisfying.

Abraham Lincoln once said, "It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong." That lesson I learned many years ago.

I have learned in my adult years that the fight for the rights of the individual common man is never won. We must always be on guard against those who would stifle or even take away human rights.

I have learned that as much as one may feel that one is prepared for death, when death knocks, the desire and will to live becomes an all-consuming effort.

Finally, I have learned that the passage of life is in itself a learning process. The problem is, so many of us forget the lessons and therefore repeat our mistakes over and over and over.

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