This is the time when we are supposed to be focused on gratitude, appreciation for the gifts we enjoy, however big or small they may be. I have much for which I am truly thankful, not just on this holiday designated for giving thanks, but every day, day in and day out. Far more than I can or care to enumerate here.
The topic of my recent contemplations has not been all those reasons for gratitude. Instead, I have been reflecting on the difference between patience and tolerance. Also the unacceptable-to-me attitude that ugly behavior must be forgiven whenever the transgressor bothers to say “sorry”.
Sorry, but sorry isn’t good enough. I have no patience with such facile, mostly empty efforts to relieve guilt, and I have even less tolerance for pretending otherwise.
There is great wisdom in the Twelve Step philosophy, whether or not one needs the program to recover from alcoholism or other addictions. The key to recovery is stated as dependent on taking stock, recognizing what harm one has caused, and not just apologizing but making amends. Not just apologizing, but taking concrete steps to right the wrongs one has done, and persisting in this effort long enough to prove that it is sincere.
I find little difficulty being patient with someone who has not yet learned, or who through illness has lost the capacity, to be respectful of others. I tolerate behavior in these circumstances to which I would otherwise not expose myself. Sort of a “no harm, no foul” situation.
Not so when the person behaving disrespectfully not only knows what he/she is doing, but presents him/herself as an upright, righteous – sorry but it’s the religion that most commonly has adherents who boast of this status – “good Christian”. The uprightness is a sham, the righteous claim is actually self-righteousness, and there is nothing either good or truly Christian in the conduct, most notably when the individual pretends apology with a few standard words and then demands forgiveness as a rightful reward for the verbal “sorry”.
Am I bitter and unforgiving? In this instance, you bet I am.
(Also annoyed at the cumbersome he/she but unwilling to give in to using the gender neutral they which has become the go to alternative.)
I have no patience with hypocrisy, and choose not to be tolerant of insincerity masquerading as regret. When I have wronged someone, especially if I have done so inadvertently, and I am sorry for my action, I start the process of apology by changing my actions – I begin to make amends. Naturally I hope that my apology will be accepted but I don’t expect that to be the case immediately. When harm has been done, it takes time and consistently changed experience for the hurt to heal.
Family caring for a – usually parent – with advanced dementia say the most difficult aspect of that care is not being recognized by the parent. It hurts to have an entire life, one’s shared history, erased. The caregivers learn to tolerate that pain, and to practice patience with the parent, repeating and repeating and reintroducing themselves day after day, sometimes each hour or even each minute. It is not an easy learning process for most caregivers. We do not readily release our need to be recognized, acknowledged, known by those with whom we have been close. Over time, most of these caregivers do let go of hope that things can be returned to “normal” and accept that the dementia has indelibly altered their relationship. A new one can be created, often new on a daily basis, that is enjoyable in a different way.
Absent dementia, there is little that will persuade any of us that others cannot change. We incarcerate to punish but also from a belief that negative consequences will teach the need to alter behavior. We sometimes lessen the punishment if the transgressor demonstrates true regret and an understanding of the harm done. In more enlightened systems, we may allow these latter felons to make amends in a meaningful fashion instead of being locked away. In all cases, we believe that the individual can and should change behavior in future.
Other mental illnesses than dementia prevent people from understanding how their actions cause harm. Absent a mental health diagnosis, we expect that others know what they are doing, and we require that they accept responsibility for their actions. Rightly so.
(It seems to me that much anger in the body politic these days arises from failure of those who can and should be doing so, holding the president accountable for the harm he has done or, among another faction, from failure to recognize that his mental state puts him into the category of illness which demands he be excused from being held responsible, but removed from his position.)
Being held responsible brings us back to amends – actions that reveal one has accepted responsibility for harm and has set out to restore balance and a positive tone to a relationship or situation. I try to be someone who has patience with others and tolerates a fair amount of less-than-pleasing behavior while providing feedback, in hopes of seeing them grow in understanding and change their conduct. Being that person also means that a time does come when I accept that I am not being heard, change is most unlikely and I must cease to interact. No more patience, no more tolerance, no more effort on my part to sustain a relationship, teach new behavior, or otherwise intervene to save the offender from his/her consequences. Time for tough love.
The tough love approach has much in common, to my mind, with the Twelve Step program in that it puts responsibility on the doer, whether actor or enabler, to make changes. Parents using tough love change the nature of supports for their child when they stop rescuing, just as those close to a substance abuser stop enabling the abuse behavior when they take responsibility for, and alter, their own part in the cycle. It then falls to the person whose conduct is failing, to live with their own consequences. If/when there is recognition of a need to change, then amends become possible, and a healing or restoration of relationship may follow.
In both processes, the “make amends” step takes time. Trust must be rebuilt and does not come from a single “sorry”, or even from a stream of them. Actions most definitely speak louder than words in this case. The offender needs to accept that there may never be a restored relationship, that the best to be achieved may just be tolerance of some limited interaction. It becomes the offender’s role to be patient, and persistent in showing respect, regret and a sincere desire for forgiveness.
I have worked with newly released prisoners, and I have stayed in touch with some of them for years afterward, as they fit themselves back into family lives, jobs, and society in the positive way incarceration is supposed to encourage them to learn. (The fact that our Corrections Departments so rarely correct behavior is a sidetrack I do not intend to follow at the moment.) My focus is on the experience of those who do rectify their conduct, and “fly right” from the time of their release. They tell me that ten, fifteen, even twenty years later, their history of criminal conviction does not disappear, but rather continues to require acknowledgment, explanation, and proof of change. “I find myself making amends to people who weren’t even born when I went to prison, for the harm my actions did to the community they were born into.” Said without resentment, but rather with an odd sense of wonder at how consequential seemingly inconsequential acts can be.
I seek to be tolerant of incapacity, and patient in giving guidance and support while learning goes on, but also clear-sighted to recognize when the time has come to put aside these behaviors and put consequences squarely on the head of the person whose conduct is unacceptable. I strive to also then be able to recognize a sincerely repentant individual offering to make meaningful amends, as I strive also to make amends when and where needed, for actions of my own that were hurtful.
Anything less – like a pasted over pretense of social chit-chat masquerading as apology and forgiveness – is an hypocrisy with which I refuse to engage.
Sorry for that, but so it is.
World Enough and Time
May 25, 2020The wear and tear of time, plus assorted horse and motor vehicle accidents and a couple slip and falls have collectively resulted in a task of aging. More of my time than I wish had been needed over the past 18 months has been spent sorting out the causes of a variety of body pains, the triggers that set them off, and what treatments can reduce the pain to livable without creating new and different health problems. Along the way I verified the now-scientifically-proven hypothesis that ups and downs of the barometer are felt in the joints in advance of the visible weather changes they herald. I succeeded in identifying a sluggish gallbladder that the tests my doctor ordered merely confirmed. I’ve adopted some preventive herbals treatments and now have a few that have proven effective when different types of pain become too strong to ignore.
So I’m about as settled into effective symptom management as I expect is possible. And trying at the same time to settle into accepting that I can only respond to, not control, the variables, so will always have to be flexible in facing what each day presents.
All of which activity I now find may have had a different ultimate purpose than the obvious one of helping me become more comfortable in my daily activities. The detecting involved is now being called upon for quite another challenge. I want to sort out what underlies the so far inexplicable fluctuation in egg production from my small flock of hens.
Some of the variables – weather in particular – are probably the same as those that affect my pain levels. Cold and damp are not helpful. High wind is also probably as disturbing to the ladies as it is to my joints. But other potential factors are unique to the flock and as yet unidentified by me. I’m considering their amount of food (type also) and access to water in the small bowl they prefer (the bigger one that assures they do not go without is consistently shunned). I try to note whether our protective dog has been barking more – or less – at the variety of four legged visitors who pass nearby. Is she engaged with running off stray dogs who can be considered a threat by the hens , or merely alerting that the neighbor’s cows are in an adjacent pasture? Might there be a snake or a passing skunk disturbing them? Are some of them, like me, just feeling the aches and fatigue of age? I know there is one that must be recovering from the exquisite pain of laying the largest double yolk egg I have ever seen!
Two of the hens have gone broody, despite not having a rooster around to impregnate them. They will, I trust, resume laying when they fail in their attempts to hatch sterile eggs. Will they be challenged into more consistent production by the presence of 5 new flock members, including a young rooster? Or will they instead divert their energy to the establishment of a new pecking order with the youngsters put in their bottom-of-the-pole place?
Without access to comprehensible feedback, such as my own body gave me, I question whether I will ever have answers that enable me to reliably collect eggs from everyone each day. No matter – puzzling my way through the variables is a good distraction from equally unanswerable questions about what lies ahead for us all as we move on into the changing world we are glimpsing. As often as I have heard, and have quoted to myself, that the only certainty is change, my mind continues to try to find answers – certainty – in complex situations which defy resolution. Undoubtedly that is why I relax at night with crossword puzzles and Free Cell. Solvable challenges, with set answers.
That same mind that likes order and seeks connections recently made me aware of a list of seemingly unconnected situations. Green ice in the Antarctic, shrinking of the polar caps, bark beetle devastation of forests in the southern Rockies, insect destruction of olive groves in France and Italy, more frequent and more fierce storms of all types all around the globe, non-seasonal temperature extremes setting ever new records, spread of hostile insects like the killer bees into environments where they have not previously been known, and of course now the worldwide spread of virulent new virus-based illnesses. A quick and easy answer is “climate change” if the question is “what is the cause of all these negatives?”
But when the question is “what is the solution?” no such single simple answer presents itself.
Nor is there a single simple answer to my questions about how I will adapt to a recently changed pattern in my personal life, a change that is still evolving, with key decisions yet to be made. In past years my life circumstances enforced the learning of patience – waiting for the time to be right for significant alteration in employment, companionship and other facets of daily life. Now I seem to be facing the opposite lesson. Or maybe just a different facet of patience – learning to step back and observe fast moving changes without feeling I have to act or “figure it all out.”
Just as I am unlikely to sort out all the influences on my chickens’ egg laying propensities, and I know I don’t have many answers to the multitude of manifestations of change in the environment; just as I know my scope of action in our tormented civil (uncivil) society is limited to what I can do in my immediate surroundings; so too I need to remind myself daily that my mind is not in charge of finding answers to my personal challenges. Those require detachment, patience, observation and tolerance of uncertainty.
The way forward for me personally, and for the larger society as well, will show itself in due time.
Who knows, maybe I’ll also be gifted with an insight that turns my poultry yard into the most prolific egg production unit in the region. Wouldn’t that be fun!
Tags:human potential, pain, patience, plagues, poultry, relationships
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