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This is a post entirely not about writing.
May. 2nd, 2012 06:47 pmSo, a while ago, I said I was going to blog about The Thing That Happened A Few Weeks Ago. And then Life and deadlines and Kickstarter happened and ate my brain, and now it appears I have a Spring-onset cold. I also have Nyquil, beef broth & whisky. And Cary Grant on DVD. That cold doesn't stand a chance.
But That Thing is still sitting in my brain, wanting to be dealt with.
So. Here's a piece of life-learning from Auntie Practical Meerkat.
When you're trying to juggle the bits and pieces that make up life - personal and professional - sometimes you drop a bit or a piece. I did. I screwed up (it happens), and someone felt insulted by my actions or lack thereof.
It wasn't intentional, and when it was brought to my attention, I felt terrible, and apologized immediately.
[occasionally, I insult people intentionally. They get a very different response. And it's usually quite pointy.]
Based on the silence since then, my apology was not acceptable/not accepted. This person chose to be offended and insulted, and nothing I would do or say could change that.
This sucks, on several levels. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, especially when they didn't mean to be offensive. And this was someone I had hoped to build a better relationship with, not burn bridges.
So that rejection, coupled with my original screwup, dumped me into choppy emotional water. And like any true Virgo, once I begin to analyse, I can't stop the what-ifs and maybe-thens. For the next day or so I kept thinking "what could I have said, that would have made it better? What did that person want, that I didn't give? Was what I did so terrible that I can never be forgiven, ever, no matter how unintentional it was?"
And the answers were, respectively: probably nothing, possibly more than I am morally responsible for, and no, it wasn't.
(I've skirted that level, I've seen that level. This was just a screwup.)
And here's what, after those emotional capsizes, I remembered. If someone chooses not to accept an honest apology, there's nothing you or I can do to convince them otherwise. We can only control our own behavior.
There is a mantra I learned during therapy, when I was in my 30's and going through a metric load of emotional crap: When rebuked, consider the charge fully, and then either refute it, or accept it. Use the rebuke to look into your behavior and/or words, and do better, as and where needed. Then let go, and move forward.
Or, in shorter words: we can't fix things that want to be broken. Don't, in trying, let yourself get broken, too.
But That Thing is still sitting in my brain, wanting to be dealt with.
So. Here's a piece of life-learning from Auntie Practical Meerkat.
When you're trying to juggle the bits and pieces that make up life - personal and professional - sometimes you drop a bit or a piece. I did. I screwed up (it happens), and someone felt insulted by my actions or lack thereof.
It wasn't intentional, and when it was brought to my attention, I felt terrible, and apologized immediately.
[occasionally, I insult people intentionally. They get a very different response. And it's usually quite pointy.]
Based on the silence since then, my apology was not acceptable/not accepted. This person chose to be offended and insulted, and nothing I would do or say could change that.
This sucks, on several levels. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, especially when they didn't mean to be offensive. And this was someone I had hoped to build a better relationship with, not burn bridges.
So that rejection, coupled with my original screwup, dumped me into choppy emotional water. And like any true Virgo, once I begin to analyse, I can't stop the what-ifs and maybe-thens. For the next day or so I kept thinking "what could I have said, that would have made it better? What did that person want, that I didn't give? Was what I did so terrible that I can never be forgiven, ever, no matter how unintentional it was?"
And the answers were, respectively: probably nothing, possibly more than I am morally responsible for, and no, it wasn't.
(I've skirted that level, I've seen that level. This was just a screwup.)
And here's what, after those emotional capsizes, I remembered. If someone chooses not to accept an honest apology, there's nothing you or I can do to convince them otherwise. We can only control our own behavior.
There is a mantra I learned during therapy, when I was in my 30's and going through a metric load of emotional crap: When rebuked, consider the charge fully, and then either refute it, or accept it. Use the rebuke to look into your behavior and/or words, and do better, as and where needed. Then let go, and move forward.
Or, in shorter words: we can't fix things that want to be broken. Don't, in trying, let yourself get broken, too.
