I’ve been unwittingly very unfair too many times. Thankfullly, I’ve soon recognized my unfairness more often than I’ve been confronted by it.
Anyway, the person most deserving of apology would not welcome being notified of that, not to mention reading how well I realize how wittingly unfair I can be: “I love you who doesn’t deserve it, so that makes me doubly better than you.”
I’m so deeply sorry I hurt you with impulsive candor, then hurt you more with lots of self-serving explanation, which feels to me now irreparable, as well as inexcusable. I’m so sorry.
I try to face myself truly, candidly, and deeply (re: all the years passed—all the years to come?). I hope that, altogether, the facing is authentic (“brutally” honest, when that’s correctively needed). I hope I’m always willing to accept actual culpability.
But all that’s between me and myself, isn’t it?
All in all, I feel very good about myself, my life, despite stark facing of crimes occasionally. I don’t spurn myself. I deserve to love myself, and I do. I have lived in good conscience far more than in bad conscience, because I’ve generally had enough courage to face my mistakes and learn. I hope.
I live in good conscience. I’m open to whatever others wish to confront me with, about how I should have lived otherwise than they experienced. That’s a chance to learn. I have nothing to hide. (But we would pursue that privately.)
In retrospect, a lot of foolishness in my life was because I was young and learning to live. I’m still learning to live, but I make better errors now.
I also still make errors that allow for no sense of humor about what I did. But I don’t repeat those errors (given that I recognize them), I hope.
I suffer losses, due to my mistakes, and I suffer from that, which is good.
I stand up and move on, hopefully better for it all.
Feeling rich empathy is not about pity. It’s being there with the other (or heartfully believing so). When the other apparently can’t be reached, empathy is painful—which is OK.
Also, suffering my foolishness is OK, if it’s fruitful: letting go of a daughter I never had; accepting that a cherished student turned away; realizing I unconsciously wanted a teenage love to return decades later; dissolving resentment toward a dear friend who killed herself without prior notice (as if I might have saved her); no longer mourning that a prospect of deep friendship across decades of difference in age is fiction.
Tomorrow! Melancholy is easily dissolved into exuberance—without bipolarity, too! (Never lived with that issue.)
Retain capability for modulation in all endeavors.
Happy New Year!
