I Think It's About Forgiveness...

I won't get rich. I might never get even a speck of recognition. It's a safe bet to say that I might never learn all of my lessons, but when it's all said and done I hope that I can say that I was a good man...that I was better than I could have been, than I might have been under different circumstances. I want to know that I found something valuable in my life, and that perspective, whether learned or found, or endured, was what defined me in the end. Tonight, out of the blue, I was thinking about my parents, and about those things that have defined their lives and I found myself upset. It's a terrible thing to have to redefine yourself after love, and to endure loss. It's a tragic thing to watch yourself dismantled by another, and when my parents marriage fell apart it was a tragedy for everyone. For us boys, sure, but we were young, and would have a lifetime to piece that all back together, but for my Mom and Dad, there were just too many pieces on the ground, and who could even know where to begin. They certainly didn't.

It just struck me that I'd been thinking about that loss in very personal terms for nearly thirty years now, when all I ever really lost was normalcy. They lost everything. Sometimes we can't see our own selfishness because it's right there under our feet...it's what we've been standing on to prop us up for so long. I suppose it's true what they say...when you're young you don't know a damned thing. If you're lucky you get older and you figure it out. Tonight I realized that just like Don Henley said, " it's about forgiveness," and it's most certainly not about me.



How can a %$&@!ing Eagles song turn you into such an introspective fool? I dunno, but it did. I think about the things that I do for a living now, and the things that I've lived through, and suddenly "all the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again." There's the heart of the matter, and it seems that for most of my life I've missed it. I can't really fathom what my Mom and Dad went through...what anyone goes through that endures such a thing. June's father once watched his own life collapse just as my own parents did. It's an awful thing, an unfair unravelling of everything you thought that you were, and everything that you believed in. It's something I don't ever want to manage...something I'm not sure I'm built for. Just the thought of it brings me to tears and suddenly I'm reminded how all my hurt and confusion paled in comparison to theirs. I think about just what's at stake in all of it and my heart crumbles into a thousand tiny little pieces. How you survive that is something I can barely comprehend.

I'm thankful for my life and job every day. It reminds me to think about others, to consider everything, to make no judgements, to do my best to empathize, and to understand...and even after all that practice, it's still hard sometimes. What reassures me is how we have no comprehension of what another person is going through, or of how they do it. What I'm regularly reminded of is how fragile and unprotected from the elements we are, but that in the end, for the most part, we survive...we manage. It strikes me every day how hard life is...how difficult it can be for some people to face themselves, and the day, and the things that they'd never expected to have to endure. No one expects to fall apart and no one is prepared to rebuild, but we do...and if you're not the one weighed down with the task, then you don't understand it. Suddenly tonight I'm thinking about my parents, and June's Dad and I feel humble to think about what they've managed emotionally, and what I've been so $%#&ing blind to all of these young and selfish years. In the end I think it's about forgiveness...yourself, others, life, luck...in the end it's about everything but yourself. I never understood that until right now, and I've got Don f#$%ing Henley to thank for that. Man, life throws curves. I didn't see that one coming.