Pearly Gates Principle

Having grown up in a small, rural, and French Catholic community, I now realize that there were many contradictions which influenced the shaping of my thinking.

Without getting into the nitty-gritty details of why I’m so messed up (I’ll leave that to my therapist to sort out and potentially a novel one day), there were many competing cultural and religious philosophies.  I realize that these attitudes and contradictions are found everywhere; however, in a small isolated area, they seem more concentrated and perhaps more extreme.  Without the dilution by other ideals and cultures, the philosophies actually can become unspoken ‘laws’ in many people’s minds. (eg. Does it matter which language is my core language? Am I a bad person for not marrying into the same culture?  Is going to weekly mass imperative? (Let alone a French one!))

At some point in my life, I had to reconcile these contradictions and learn how to cope with the seemingly incompatible values (Love thy neighbor…as long as they’re Catholic!).  I created my own “Pearly Gates Principle” to guide me. 

This Principle is simply:  “When I get to the pearly gates, will this matter?”  At the end of my life, is the issue that I’m grappling with going to truly matter? 

Being able to bring the issue back to a simple Yes or No answer has helped me be less conflicted and more compassionate towards those who may not have the same perspective I have…because they too have their childhood influences to grapple with.