The Mistake Collection

On being lost. And Found.

Photo by Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash

My brother-in-law sent me an email this morning wishing me a happy new year. He also told me he’d fed the photo below from my post last week into Midjourney ai just for fun.

Midjourney produced the new sign below and it made me laugh out loud. As is often the case with him, he had sent me the perfect message at the perfect time, which I first read as, “You’re lost. Here.”

I had no idea what to write about today, am in fact, trying to get in the habit of writing these missives to you a whole week ahead of time, which seems both sane and utterly impossible. 

How can I write about what I'm experiencing on Tuesday when I haven't even gotten there yet? I realize the fallacy of this thinking, but thinking isn't usually the most straightforward path to truth. The heart is. But sometimes the heart is quiet, or I'm not listening. Probably the latter.

I tried writing a letter to love, Elizabeth Gilbert style, but the prompt was on forgiveness and I'm not in the mood to forgive anyone today. And if I'm honest, the person I have to forgive most in my life is me, and she's an oh-so-difficult subject. Her transgressions run far and wide. How to forgive someone for an entire lifetime of wrongdoings? 

Not to say my entire life has been a wrongdoing, but in the course of 50 years, you collect mistakes, like when you were 14 and you decided you loved frogs and for the next 20 years anyone who knew you then (read: family and friends willing to stick it out through the joy and slog of humanness) gave you a frog something for all the gift-giving opportunities in a life.

Mistakes are like that. They pile up and you can't give them away, you can't throw them away either. Like the frogs, they tether you to something, they provide an anchor, even if it's one that may sink you if you don't cut the line and sail on. 

My frog collection is long gone and the mistake collection, while still intact, is hovering on the brink these days.

Someone else can forgive us, and it's really nice, lovely, a relief even, but it's not the same as forgiving ourselves. That's the thorn that's buried under the skin, that will hurt quite a lot to get out, that will be an open wound for a while before it's healed. 

When we lived in Costa Rica, this cascade of fuchsia bougainvillea flowed over the wall at the end of our pool. It also grew straight up into the air, blocking our view of the estuary and the ocean beyond. It was my job to cut back the towering spikes that grew overnight. That is not metaphor or hyperbole. It's truth. They grew inches each day, several feet a week. And these were not the thornless variety. 

I had perpetual scratches until I learned that gardening in the tropics in thick long sleeves and leather gloves was preferable to a constant litany of bougainvillea wounds. I have a small black tattoo on my left index finger, the result of a thorn that went deep and did not get removed. 

Thirteen years ago, I moved out of that house which sounds like paradise because it was, and have never been back. I loved that house as if it were alive, maybe because I felt I could become alive again in it, but those were dark days for me. I would get worse before I got better and I'd have to leave the house (not to mention a marriage) to do it. I have not fully forgiven myself for the fact of my leaving, for the way I did it, for those I left behind with little to no explanation. The house is gone now, sold last spring to someone new, and my sadness at that is something I haven't quite come to terms with yet. 

Maybe forgiveness will get me there, but where to start?

Kristen Neff, the brilliant, calm, kind researcher who gave us the concept of self-compassion (versus the Buddhist idea of compassion for all other living beings) teaches classes and I was lucky enough to attend one several years ago. Part of my healing path out of the darkness. 

Her advice for forgiveness was a bit like how one should approach an imminent and huge holiday meal. Eat a small breakfast, snack on the nuts and Chex mix and cheese, but not too much or you won't be able to eat all the stuffing you want. Approach the day bite by bite, and take your time when the whole meal is finally in front of you. The longer you take, the more you can eat. 

Forgiving oneself is a big meal that doesn't need to be eaten all at once. 

Kristen said to start with the words, "I begin to forgive." I can still feel the relief in my body when she said that. I don't have to forgive someone else or myself all at once? 

Nope. It's a gradual thing. It takes time. 

Little pieces of your heart will soften and open up and others will need to stay closed a little longer, until you feel buoyed up by the parts that have begun to expand. Then you forgive a little more and another little bud opens up and thinks spring might be okay after this long long winter of anger and fear. 

Our hearts were not made for holding hurt and resentment, especially towards ourselves. They can, but this is not their purpose. 

Do you remember when I wrote about the Dalai Lama not comprehending self-hate? The whole concept had never occurred to him, he'd never experienced it, never practiced it the way we do here in the west: non-forgiveness as atonement. 

It's a ridiculous misuse of our hearts. They were made for expansion, we've just lost touch with where to drink from that well. 

We're lost. Here. In the tundra between fear and forgiveness.

Ironically and beautifully, the same place we're lost is the place we're found. 

Shall we all be so lucky to be lost here in our own hearts, this space where forgiveness is possible and love is the way we get found.