Dear Reader,
It’s been a bit since we had a chat, dear reader. A chat. Not a diatribe on my part, nor a lecture, and if it is still a lesson that issues forth (I am a teacher at heart, always have been), it is one for me alone. I’ve limited myself to myself as the only acceptable target of examination and display for so long, I often forget that other people can take things the wrong way. And I have not been especially kind on myself in the process.
I am much kinder on myself now, although old ways die hard, and I can still come across as…prickly.
I think I’m being clever and letting my little light shine; sometimes I alienate people in the attempt.
This is a consequence of being desperate to please even if it doesn’t look that way. I have always been desperate to please. When the people who I was desperate to please inevitably proved themselves unworthy of my desperation, and desperation is rarely worthy, except in the pursuit of forgiveness, I withdrew into worlds of my own creation.
And then pulled the ladder up behind me, closed the door, and said, “I tell you what world, you don’t ask too much of me and I won’t ask too much of you.” Neither one of us has held up our end of that bargain. So I decided to break that contract in favor of a new one.
Those who only talk about themselves often find themselves in shallow water. Because much of the good stuff to be found in our depths are discovered in swimming the depths of others. It is a mistake to stay in that part of the pool that one knows their feet can always reach. This is not swimming, this is wading.
Only the most foolish of fools jumps into the ocean when they haven’t even mastered the placidity, warmth, and safety of their own pool.
On the other hand, only one who risks going too far can know how far one can go.
The foolish fool finds fact floundering, fluttering and flailing amidst floods. That they did not prepare for. The same as the body surfer drug out by the undertow, because she did not learn how to swim. True, often we are tossed into the deep end without prior instruction, this is called life.
I am no expert in the living of life. I have made many egregious mistakes. But all men make mistakes. So long as the evil is repaired and the lesson is learned than the mistake was more than that, it was a lesson to be learned, which all mistakes are. The only crime is pride. The swelling of the chest and the insistence, no! No! I am not the one who is wrong. It is the children – as Principal Skinner is so fond of saying.
I am sorry that I am still talking about myself. Still using that damn word “I.”
But in the end, it is all we are left with. That and the love we gave. If we are lucky, very very lucky, someone, and it need only be one if you do it right, will understand you. Make that connection and say, yes, you are my brother from another mother. The sister I always wished I had. The lover that always got away.
And I love you.
I do, you know, dear reader. I always have.
