Well I had some stuff hit the fan yesterday. And I totally had it coming. I knew that my conduct and beliefs were not matching up. I did it anyway.
I would love to dive into a million excuses here but I won’t.
I fucked up.
I made a mistake.
I hurt people.
I am sorry that I did.
I would love to say that I have evolved into a person who is whole, complete and virtuous. And I am much more so than I used to be. But I still have some pretty major character defects running my life and I guess it is time to really deal with those.
I have heard it said that each problem comes with a gift. And that is how I am choosing to look at yesterday. I was confronted with a couple of problems and while I am still reeling from the fall out and likely will be for some time, I do see the gift each problem brought.
Each problem brought with it the gift of a deeper understanding of who I am, how I am and where I fall amazingly short of being who I want to be. The gift with each problem was to be able to see that I am not perfect and I still fuck stuff up...and why.
I have resisted getting all maudlin and self absorbed about it. I did some stuff I am not proud of, behaved incredibly selfishly and am now confronted with it in a way that I cannot really escape, deny or shirk. I may have behaved badly, but I will not make it worse by denying it, minimizing it or making excuses.
It is a long damn life, if we are lucky. And I am going to louse it up. I am going to fail to meet my own expectations for myself. I am going to let others down. I am going to behave like a selfish jerk sometimes. For me, the first part in addressing it, is to admit that I did it.
So this is my attempt to do that. Admit that I did something that I knew was wrong but I did it anyway without regard for others. I cared about what I was getting and not that I was failing to meet my own moral code. I have to admit also that sometimes I feel like I am not sure who I am at all. Parts of me leaking out into the world that I do not like, approve of or really still believe are there...but then I see it and I feel sorry and ashamed.
I guess what I am most upset about is that I let myself down. I hurt people in the process but mostly I did it to myself. Allowed selfishness to drive my decisions and obviate the need for a functioning moral compass.
So now I am confronted with what to do next. And because my moral compass isn’t working all that well, I am going to take direction from someone else’s...I am going to just stand down on my decision making ability and do what I am told to do. It isn’t easy but I really do want to be a different person. I really do want to be better. I do want to really walk the walk.
I want to clean up my wreckage and do the work so that I do not do it again. Really. I see me and I am not loving what I see.
It is a little too early to start talking about forgiveness. But I know that beating myself senseless isn’t going to change what I did. In fact, if history is any indication coupled with my observation of other’s conduct, beating oneself is a good way to say you are sorry but change nothing.
Clearly I have some work to do. So I will do it. That is my commitment. That is what living a spiritual life means...to me. It doesn’t mean that I do it right and perfect and without wreckage. It means that even when I fuck it up, I am willing to own it, and change so that I become a different person, one who will not make the same errors again.
For now, I am very sorry for how I behaved. And that is all that I can say today. I won’t say I will do better because I just tried to do that and failed.
Instead I will share that regardless of how hard and long I try, sometimes, I am still pretty gross in my living. And all I can say is that I see it and I am willing to do the work to be better, do better over and over again. I can only om my shit by owning my shit as it appears.
