If these accusations are true one has to ask, how is it that a grown man can walk into a shower room, witness a child being raped, and do nothing to stop it? The only explanation I can come up with is the jedi mind trick most of us have come to believe about wealth. An absolute belief, that the accumulation of wealth is the have all end all to all problems.
Sure there is that cliche statment, "money doesn't buy happiness." However I suspect that most people have only an intellectual understanding of the saying, while the true meaning of the statement is lost on an emotional level. For a graduate assistant (a grown man) to have allegedly walked in on another grown man raping a child and choose to not intervene, means that he was concerned about not ruffling the wrong feathers. If the allegations were true, he would have made the right decision in not hurting his academic career at the school, yet another reason why professional sports programs don't belong in schools. I am almost certain that his silencers would have gone out of their collective way to derail his academic career if he had pursued the issue.
There lies the problem, if one has a goal, a vision, or an ambition, of what relevance is such a dream if you have to sacrifice your morals and values en route to meeting your goal? It stands to reason that if the path a person takes to fulfill his or her dreams comes at the expense of his or her morals and values, having accomplished the desired dream will result in a lifestyle that is empty and devoid of meaning.
If part of what it took for Joe Paterno to lead his team to several winning seasons was to turn a blind eye to his former assistant coach sexually abusing children, short of seizing his locker room keys, then those winning seasons have no meaning.
As parents we should teach our children that prosperity is not, nor has it ever been achieved at the expense of others. For those who argue otherwise, I will point out that what may seem like prosperity achieved at the expense of others, is really an illusion.
I wonder what Joe Paterno would have done had he found out that one of those children being molested was his?
So what are your thoughts? Do you feel you have a better argument? If so please leave your appropriate comments in the comment section.
Ugo is a psychotherapist and owner of Road 2 Resolutions, a professional counseling and lifecoaching practice.
