To Err is Human... to Forgive, Ongoing and Ultimately Pointless

The past few weeks have been very strange and very trying for me.

I am NOT perfect. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I have good days and bad days. I make good decisions and I make questionable decisions. I am just as human as everybody else and I am subject to the same desires, whims, and foibles. And when I catch myself being someone other than Who I am and/or Who I Want to Be... I make a new choice. Granted, sometimes I don't catch myself until I've fucked it all up proper... but there is always time to make a new choice. There is always time to re-manifest Who I Am.

Part of Who I Am is a loving and generous person who realizes that EVERYONE makes decisions in their lives in order to fully experience Who They Are. With some, I choose not to share in their experience and/or manifestations. With some, I do. And with those persons with whom I choose to share their experience, I try very hard to love them unconditionally - without limits, without requirements, without hope or expectation. For we are all just souls in pursuit of Who We Are. We are all actively engaged in the process of Being.

So, when I'm hurt by the actions of someone else, I try to experience the hurt and then make a new choice. A new choice that embraces that person's choice to experience themself in THAT particular way, a new choice that reminds me that my emotions are my responsibility alone.

Some people call this decision "forgiveness." Some call it "weakness." And some call it "stupid."

I call it "freedom."

Unfortunately, the past few weeks have shown me, in no uncertain terms, that I am more practiced at this skill than even I thought myself to be. I know this because it's come to my attention that when people do things - seemingly deliberately, but that could just be paranoia - that I feel hurt about, it's always the SAME people and it's pretty much always the SAME kind of thing. And forgiveness is becoming quite tedious in this regard. Sure, it's the path to my emotional freedom... but it seems like the path is only here because I've walked down it SO MANY TIMES. And I have to wonder: do these same people continue to manifest the same decisions that hurt me because they are truly experiencing themselves in this way over and over again? Or are they doing it because they know they can "get away" with it with no emotional repercussions from me?

Just another thing that makes me go, "Hmmmmmmm."

WWIT?

I was talking to My Really Stupid Friend this morning. Just chatting, really, about this and that. I had originally called him to bitch him out about something, but decided against it by the time he called me back, though was still in the throes of the righteous indignation that had sparked the call. As the conversation wore on, I calmed down more and more... until he mentioned that he had "run into" the subject of all those posts long ago about how stupid my Really Stupid Friend is.

We ALL know that NOBODY just "runs into" somebody like that. As it turns out, he didn't either... she called him. And then he agreed to meet her.

Of course, this has NEVER been any of my business, but the panic and horrific feelings of guilt-by-association almost immediately re-presented themselves to my consciousness. He talked a bit about their brief meeting, and then said...

"As she drove away, I thought to myself, 'what was I thinking?' How did I get in that space in the first place?"

And I said, "Oh my Lord, I know exactly what you're talking about." And then I laughed until I cried.

Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I have asked myself that same question, I could retire right now. But the REAL irony of it all is that he and I share the knowledge of the Emotional Supernova, that mathematical point of despair - or in his case, supreme confidence - that obliterates EVERYTHING, leaving nothing that existed before undestroyed. Sitting smack-dab in the middle of the totally new construction that emerged out of the utter annhiliation of everything-that-was and then asking one's self "what was I thinking?" has to be the epitome of postmodern observational angst.

And realizing that something or someone that, at one time, was important enough to be the catalyst that fueled a universal explosion is NOW someone I'd barely glance at on the street (much less willingly destroy everything in my life for) must be the epitome of regret.