This is one of those little parable-ish stories. The story is one I like, but if you're worried that I plan to show myself as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to younger fish, please don't. I am not wise. Although I am old. My point in the fish story is that the most obvious, important realities are often the hardest to see and talk about.
Of course the main requirement of an apology letter like this is that I'm supposed to write about the meaning of forgiveness. To try to explain to you why my apology has actual human value and not just some blog everyday requirement. Because the really big thing about apologies isn't really about the capacity to explain, but rather about the choice of what to forgive. If freedom of choice about what to forgive seems too obvious to waste time thinking about, I'd ask you to think about fish and water for a second. And forget about the doubts about the totally obvious.
I think this is one part of what apologizing is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have a little critic inside me and my certainties. Because about 99% of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, I have learned the hard way, totally wrong and deluded.
One example of total wrongness: I am the center of the universe. The realest and most vital person in existence. Not the kind of thing you thought I was going to say huh?
I'm sorry it is my default setting, born that way from birth.
I'm sorry that there is no experience I have had that I was not the absolute center of.
I'm sorry the world was right there in front of ME.
I'm sorry it was always to the left or right of ME.
I'm sorry it was on MY TV or MY computer.
I'm sorry that my thoughts and feelings were so immediate, urgent, real, that I had trouble listening to other people's.
This is not my best virtue. In fact it's not a matter of virtue at all. It's a matter of choice. Of me choosing to do the work of somehow altering or setting free my natural, hard wired default setting (as my dad called it "Natural Man") which is to be totally and completely self-centered. To see EVERYTHING through this lens. I have met some people who have adjusted for their natural default setting and I often hear them described as being "well-adjusted" which is not an accident. Obviously, I question myself. It's tricky. How much of this adjustment requires knowledge and how much is just paying attention to what is going on inside me, how I feel?
I'm sorry it is extremely hard for me to stay alert instead of getting lost inside my own head (may be happening right now?! lol). Twenty years of learning how to exercise some control over how and what I think and I still struggle with being conscious and aware enough to choose how I figure out meaning from experience. I'm sorry that because I haven't sometimes, I got totally hosed.
I'm sorry I have gone through parts of my comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to my head of being alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole. Getting concrete here. When I was in school I did not have any clue what day in day out really meant. Nobody talks about whole, large parts of life that involve being bored, same old routine and frustration. You know what I am talking about. Working, grocery shopping, cleaning, everyone has to do this. It's routine day after week after month after year. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. My point is that is where choosing comes in. The traffic jams, crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and make a conscious decision to notice. Otherwise I'm going to be grumpy and miserable every time I shop.
I'm sorry that I made situations like these all about me. About MY hungry baby and MY tiredness and MY wanting to just get home. And for seeming like the whole world was in my way. Or how the most disgustingly selfish cars, driven by ugly, inconsiderate and aggressive drivers are honking at me or cutting me off. Or how consumer society just sucks at Costco and so on.
You get the idea.
I am sorry I choose to think this way sometimes. Except it wasn't really a choice was it? It was easy and automatic. Sometimes I find myself making up excuses for other people. Maybe the car that just cut me off is on the way to the hospital with a baby that is turning blue from needing a heart transplant. It is actually me that was in their way. Or that everyone else in line at Walmart is just as bored as I am and that some of these people have harder, more painful lives than I do.
I'm not suggesting this as moral advice. Or that you should think this way. Or that I can do it automatically. Because I know it is HARD. It takes energy and effort and some day's I can't or won't do it.
But on most days, if I am aware enough to give myself a choice, I can choose to look differently at the obese, crazy-eyed, fake-finger-nailed lady who just slapped her son in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like that. Maybe she's been at the hospital for three nights with no sleep holding the hand of her boyfriend who had a traumatic brain injury. Not that this is likely, it just could be if I consider the possibilities.
I get to decide how I am going to try to see it.
I am free. The really important kind of freedom that has to do with attention and awareness and discipline, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in a thousand petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is what I am apologizing for. You, of course, are free to forgive me for whatever you wish. This isn't about life after death. I am talking about life BEFORE death. Simple awareness; being aware of what is real and so hidden in plain sight all around us. I will keep reminding myself:
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do. Stay focused and alive in the world day in and day out. Which means the scripture is true: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Forgive me in this life?
I wish you way more than luck.
