At what point do we get to look at another being and say, "You are a despicable person," or "You are trash or a tramp" or any other combination of disparaging words that say that that person is more "sinful" than we are?
I recently had an evening of someone revealing to me things that had happened to them and I found myself judging the people that they were talking about. They didn't understand my judgement and at one point focused my vision on an incident now 22 years in my past, and called it almost the same "kind" of behavior as the people they were sharing with me.
I have a troubled and difficult past. No one who knows me would say I try to hide who I am. But I had romanticised this "piece" of my history to a point where it was almost unrecognizable as reality because the truth of the matter is that if I had to look at my behavior 22 years ago very closely, I'd break.
Last night I spent the night looking at my behavior. Judging myself and judging myself again for being judgemental of the people originally shared with me. If I had had any money, or ANY where to go, last night I would have run away from home. But I have neither money, nor place, so I had to stay.
Not to mention, as I am wont to say, you cannot run from yourself.
So here I am...looking at myself, my behavior, my choices, and wondering is my whole life since that time 22 years ago a lie? Because I didn't face my own behavior HONESTLY 22 years ago, does that make everything that has happened in my life since then a lie? An unreality? Invalid?
I want to believe that I am no longer that person from 22 years ago. That given the same circumstances now, I would make better choices. That loneliness and brokenness would not drive me to make the decisions I did...but I cannot know. I can never, ever know.
I am intelligent enough to know that I cannot go back, I cannot change a single thing I did in my past, and I also know that to beat myself up about this aberration in my being is not at all productive, but having once looked, I cannot yet look away. Like a train wreck or a car crash, I have to look and examine and see all the parts and things and pressures that caused me to step into the life I have now...
I said to my children at one point (my 4 older children that is) that I don't know who I was at that point in my life, and I believe that is true to a certain extent. And I've also said that it wasn't me who made that decision, but, the choices preceding this one, from age 15 to age 37 make that a lie in some way. Because my choice for acting out in my life clearly went the direction that this choice took me.
The differences, however, are breathtaking in their scope. And the consequences have been both so good and so bad for everyone around me that I hesitate to even speak of it. How do I talk about that time that destroyed my "family" and the decisions that led up to it without hurting people yet again? So I don't talk about it as a general rule, which leaves me fighting my way through brokenness and sorrow and unforgiveness so deep it threatens to drown me if I look too close. So I try not to look. And for the most part, I succeed.
Until nights like last night. Where the ground beneath me opens up and threatens to swallow me whole if I let it. And I run around seeking a confessional, but feeling nothing confessed would ever be enough. And knowing that is a slap in the face of all that is divine, my own unforgiveness...
3 comments:
I'm coming through to the other side, finally. I can't know who I was emotionally at that time of my life. I cannot go back and recreate the circumstances that made me who I was then. For whatever unfathomable reasons I chose what I chose, I dit it and, as they say, the rest is history. GOOD, BAD, Ugly, it's my history that I have lived for whatever it's worth. I cannot let myself get bogged down in the muck of who I was/wasn't. I must simply realize that I chose and then lived the live I chose & I cannot go back and change anything. I can only live in the now, looking forward...
Hmmmmm.
I read this a couple of days ago, and I felt I had soemthing to say about it. If I don't do it soon I will forget.
It is an interesting situation. I have had a lot of things go well for me, and I think I have not been put into a lot of situations where I had the opportunity to do great harm. I say this because the fact that I don't have the sort of big events in my past that others do have is not because I am any sort of better person.
As for people digging up your past. Yes, they may be right that you did something in your past, and now you are calling out someone else for doing a similar evil. Well, you don't deny that you did it, but today you are not doing it anymore, and have recognized that it is wrong. It doesn't sound like you were trying to excuse anyone (least of all yourself), but rather it is these friends who have called up ancient history to try to excuse someone else. It's one of those things that we do more than we should. What does it change in the present situation? Nothing. Does it really make it ok? No.
Do we really have a predisposition to attack people? So many times we see a defence which consists of sniping back at our accuser.
Here we see the power of Christ. Yes we have all done bad things, and we need forgiveness. With Christ, justice has been done on the cross, and mercy has been granted to us. We can live on in a new life. We don't have to deny our past behaviour, we have to own it and take responsibility for it. We turn from it, knowing it was wrong, and live our life doing good from now on. Imperfect as we are we will still fail from time to time. That's called being human.
I prefer to encourage people rather than try to tear them down. Besides everything else, it sure feels a lot better. Another way I look at it is that if we are encouraging people to improve, and drawing attention to the good in them, instead of trying to beat back the bad, it is like fertilizing the grass, which will grow taller and choke out any weeds that are present. A person who is spending more time in good habits won't have time for their bad inclinations.
How about a quote from someone else? I took this from semisweetwioux's blog:
"That doesn't mean that there isn't plenty of room yet to grow . . . It doesn't mean there is no way to improve on what 'is' . . . but beating yourself up and constantly berating yourself over your missteps and poor past choices doesn't do anybody any good . . . Mistakes CAN be learned from and become valuable pivot points in life . . . regrets can become motivations for change . . . failures can provide some valuable opportunities for introspection and compassion . . ."
And that's all I have to say for the moment.
Thankfully, this is 2008.You can hardly walk down a city block without running across a guitar player improvising on front steps, a computer looping samples through an open window, or fraternity brothers tossing improvised hip hop back and forth. Finding melodies by ear is easy when you understand the concept behind the intervallic relationship. What you should think about is how important it is to you that the piano truly resembles an acoustic. If you are interested in piano for beginners, you should consider an online piano course. Lounges, cruise ships, churches, and bands offer plenty of scope.
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