\nmistake
\n[as if anyone<\/span>
\ncan make just one<\/span>
\nmistake]<\/span><\/p>\n
and now I must make I must endure this and I must drink this this host and chalice <\/p>\n ___________________________________________________________<\/p>\n I have meant to write on this topic since I started the blog over three years ago.\u00a0 That it has taken so long says how hard it has been to tie strings together.\u00a0 That I am writing it now does not necessarily mean that I have.\u00a0 But pressing on, here are thoughts about mistakes, regrets, self-forgiveness and the self.<\/p>\n With respect to the poem above: it is not a cry for help.\u00a0 It is just a depressing poem.<\/p>\n We agree on various names for acts of bad behavior, depending on context and severity. When one violates the law of the state, society calls it a crime.<\/em> When one fails to live up to the moral code of a religion, the church calls it a sin.<\/em> When a politician gets caught, he calls it a mistake<\/em> and he sets off on an orchestrated rehabilitation tour.\u00a0 (The mistake he regrets most is that he let himself be caught.)<\/p>\n [wpcol_2third id=”” class=”” style=”background-color:#f8f8f8; padding:0px 0px 25px 0px;”]I have not committed any crimes and, as I reject religions, I don’t subscribe to sin.\u00a0 But I have made mistakes.\u00a0 Small ones, large ones, thankfully no life-threatening ones.\u00a0 Don’t worry:\u00a0 I am not going to inventory them here in some public act of penance nor will I ask to be forgiven.\u00a0 I’m not quite that desperate or self-indulgent.\u00a0 Not quite.[\/wpcol_2third]<\/p>\n [wpcol_1third_end id=”” class=”” style=”font-size: smaller; margin: 0px 0px 12px 0px; background-color:#d8e8e8; padding: 8px 12px 12px 14px;”]To be accurate, smoking for thirty years should be called a life-threatening mistake, one that I stopped making long ago.[\/wpcol_1third_end]<\/p>\n I could charitably categorize some of my mistakes as errors in judgment<\/em>, but that would be a minority.\u00a0 And while I still make social mistakes such as gaffes<\/em> and faux pas<\/em>, those have declined over time.\u00a0 When I make mistakes now, it is typically because I have been careless and have stepped on someone else’s feelings.\u00a0 These are the important ones.<\/p>\n I don’t go out of my way to hurt other people.\u00a0 If and when I do, it is because I have been absorbed in myself or my agenda, poorly tuned into the person I am dealing with.<\/span><\/p>\n [wpcol_2third id=”” class=”” style=”background-color:#f8f8f8; padding:0px 0px 25px 0px;”]I cannot just forgive<\/em> myself for past mistakes and pretend they didn’t happen.\u00a0 One of my oft-cited formulations is: just because you learn from them doesn’t mean they weren’t mistakes.\u00a0 They were and will remain so.\u00a0 You can’t self-forgive your way out of a wrong done to others, as if you had a key called regret<\/em> that fits a lock named guilt. <\/em> You can try to forget what you did, you can reconcile yourself to it, you can look for ways to rationalize it, but you simply do not have the authority to forgive yourself.\u00a0 No matter what Deepak Chopra says<\/a>. [wpcol_1third_end id=”” class=”” style=”font-size: smaller; margin: 0 0px 16px 0px; background-color:#d8e8e8; padding: 8px 8px 12px 12px;”]Asking for forgiveness is not so noble.\u00a0 Someone got hurt because at the time it was all about you.\u00a0 You come to your senses, realize what an ass you were, apologize and ask for forgiveness.\u00a0 The initial act and the final act, and much in between, all about you.[\/wpcol_1third_end]<\/p>\n The unfortunate part of this is, if the person you hurt has forgotten about the incident or is no longer around to forgive you, then your act of poor behavior just hangs out there in history, indefinitely,\u00a0 leaving you to pay penance with feelings of regret.\u00a0 For as long as it takes you to forget.<\/p>\n [wpdiv id=”jesus” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 0px 6px 12px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]Which brings us to Jesus.\u00a0 How could humanity not<\/em> devise a being (let alone build an institution around it) that lets people shed their unforgiven wrongdoings and get on with their lives without all that tedious introspection.\u00a0 No wonder Jesus is so popular.[\/wpdiv]<\/p>\n Christopher Hitchens, from his memoir Hitch-22<\/em>: “I distinguish remorse from regret in that remorse is sorrow for one what did<\/em> do whereas regret is misery for did one not<\/em> do.”\u00a0 As much as I like Hitchens, I cite him only to disagree with him.\u00a0 I am more partial to the findings of behavioral psychologist Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Regret is an emotion and it is also a punishment that we administer to ourselves… The emotional state … is “accompanied by feelings that one should have known better, by a sinking feeling, by thoughts about the mistake one has made and the opportunities lost, by a tendency to kick oneself and correct one’s mistake, and by wanting to undo the event and to get a second chance.” <\/em><\/p>\n Kahneman cites studies to support his argument that people feel more regret from having taken an action than from having abstained from action.\u00a0 I agree.\u00a0 I review and judge my actions more carefully than I do my non-actions, and reasonably so: whereas one’s actions are countable, the acts one might<\/em> have done but did not do are infinite.<\/p>\n I am sensitive to the wrongs I do — the problem often seems to be that I sense it too late, then the moment is over, and people have moved on.\u00a0 Except for me.<\/p>\n [wpdiv id=”movedon” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 15px 6px 15px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]Are people really that good at moving on?\u00a0 I still recall the hurt of consistently being picked next-to-last on the high-school athletic field, for no other reason than my good grades.\u00a0 My wife remembers being accused of cheating by her math teacher because she did well on a test.\u00a0 Both of us would be different persons minus those negative formative experiences.\u00a0 As I said, no wonder Deepak Chopra is so popular.[\/wpdiv]<\/p>\n Why do I look at old mistakes with such fresh regret, as if I had done my misdeeds this very day?\u00a0 It seems that my brain has a knack for stamping the authority of memory<\/em> on such events (as do the brains of the people I wronged!) precisely so that my brain can remind me of them and take me down a notch, when I am being too sure of myself.<\/p>\n Maybe I should donate my medial orbitofrontal cortex<\/a> to science when I am done with it. (Yes, you may follow the link to see what I’m talking about, as long as you come back here when you are done.)<\/p>\n Think about this.\u00a0 What a person remembers about you is their impression of your last encounter.\u00a0 To that person, you are whatever happens to be his or her last memory of you,\u00a0 unless or until you replace it with some other impression.\u00a0 It is not the first impression but the last that really counts.<\/p>\n Among those I have known, there are some whose last encounter with me involved my being argumentative, or inconsiderate, or plaintive, or obnoxious, or otherwise not my best.\u00a0 These people will ever remember me negatively, for reason.\u00a0 How can I argue? \u00a0 Should I expect them to do the mental accounting and add a certain number of years of wisdom to the person they last saw?\u00a0 No, I don’t expect it — because I don’t do that kind of accounting myself.<\/p>\n [wpdiv id=”jesus” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 10px 6px 12px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]This is why I make it a point not to attend high-school reunions.\u00a0 Those events are about reliving memories, not replacing them.\u00a0 And those who I might see there — most of them thought I was a dork and a misfit if they thought of me at all.\u00a0 Why remind them of that?\u00a0 Why subject myself to the disapproval all over again?[\/wpdiv]<\/p>\n People have long memories.\u00a0 Just as I remember the junior-high and senior-high school bullies and jerks, my mistakes are preserved as memories in the minds of those I wronged, if they were to be reminded of them.\u00a0 Forgiving and forgetting: two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n I have no evidence that the people who treated me poorly in the past, for no good reason and without apologies, ever re-examined their behavior and feel regret.\u00a0 The best I can do is forget them.\u00a0 I have no use for grudges — a waste of emotional energy.\u00a0 I hope those who I wronged but never apologized to have forgotten me and hold no grudges against me.\u00a0 That too is the best I can expect.<\/p>\n I am not nearly the same person now that I was at 14, when I went to the junior-high prom and as the evening went on I danced mostly with a different girl than the one I had invited to the prom.\u00a0 (Is it narcissistic to think that my date was hurt and outraged by this but has now forgotten about it?\u00a0 Yes.)\u00a0 But how much ownership of my teen behavior and mistakes do I retain?\u00a0 What is the statute of limitations?\u00a0 What gives a person the right to selectively own or disown one’s past acts?\u00a0 And how can a person logically wave away one’s youthful mistakes without also discounting one’s youthful achievements?<\/p>\n [wpdiv id=”abandon” class=”” style=”font-size:smaller; padding:6px 10px 6px 12px; background-color:#d8e8e8;margin-bottom:16px;”]I would never abandon my date today.\u00a0 (My wife would strongly object.)\u00a0 But that I did so 47 years ago still makes me feel a bit shitty about myself.\u00a0 Thank you, ruthless neurons.[\/wpdiv]<\/p>\n Maybe what lets us disown past mistakes while taking credit for past accomplishments is the act of admitting and renouncing mistakes and, more importantly, not repeating them.\u00a0 A mistake repeated is a behavior; bad behavior ingrained becomes a personality disorder.\u00a0 A\u00a0mistake not repeated for a very long period of time can help rebuild trust in oneself and one’s character — though it means nothing to the long-ago wronged.<\/p>\n I always liked what “Red” had to say (thanks to Steven King) at his final parole hearing<\/a> at Shawshank State Penitentiary:<\/p>\n There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret.\u00a0 Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should.\u00a0 I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime.\u00a0 I want to talk to him.\u00a0 I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are.\u00a0 But I can’t.\u00a0 That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left.\u00a0 I got to live with that.\u00a0 Rehabilitated?\u00a0 It’s just a bullshit word.\u00a0 So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time.\u00a0 Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.<\/em><\/p>\n In the movie, after his eloquent speech, Red’s parole application was stamped APPROVED<\/a> and he was released from prison.<\/p>\n This blog post was more self-revealing than truth-revealing.\u00a0 I too am released, now free to go find that rock that has no earthly business being in that field, under that tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have made a mistake [as if anyone can make just one mistake] and now I must make amends [as if anyone can make just one amend] I must endure this cold disapproval [if one could touch it the hand … Continue reading
\namends
\n[as if anyone<\/span>
\ncan make just one<\/span>
\namend]<\/span><\/p>\n
\ncold disapproval
\n[if one could touch it<\/span>
\nthe hand would shatter]<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbitter tea
\n[if one could taste it<\/span>
\nthe tongue would blister]<\/span><\/p>\n
\nI serve, to me<\/p>\nOn Mistakes<\/span><\/h3>\n
On Regret<\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/del>[\/wpcol_2third]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/pong.gif\" "\\"Pong\\"")
<\/a>My brain doesn’t care that I am not the same person in terms of maturity or values as I was when I originally screwed up.\u00a0 No, neurons are heartless. (They have some nerve!)\u00a0 My neurons remember what I thought and how I behaved way back when, no matter that I have changed since then.\u00a0 It is as if I am doomed to see myself as the world’s worst PONG player, based on a few notable defeats at the college dorm, even though no one remembers or cares about PONG forty years later.\u00a0 Game over, you loser.<\/p>\nForgiving and Forgetting<\/span><\/h3>\n
On the Self<\/span><\/h3>\n