Excuses or Acceptance
Justification is cheap, Love is an investment.
It has been a hectic few weeks.
Traveling across the continent, reacquainting myself with the many aspects of my life I left behind for a 7-month trip around the world. Moving our home into a new space, and settling my spirit in the liminal place between old and new.
It’s been exhausting. I’ve lost a lot of momentum and failed to meet some goals.
I feel the urge to share why it’s been so hard. To make excuses for myself.
To justify and even glorify my challenges, my failures, and my suffering to feel good about my choices. To save face, and make sure each of you knows that there were good reasons why I haven’t been posting to my blog every Wednesday, like I promised.
And why wouldn’t I? I don’t want to judge or punish myself for failing to meet my goals. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s a quick path to a downward spiral. Judgement never helps.
And yet… the urge to justify my failure is still a form of self-judgement.
There is a fine line between accepting our failure and excusing it, I’ve found.
When we make excuses, we’re searching for ways to justify the appearance that everything is okay. To uphold the myth of our own self-righteousness, and create evidence to confirm the stories that shape our identities.
We have judged the results of these circumstances as “bad” and therefore have to create a narrative that can reconcile how we, as wholly “good” people, were capable of producing a “bad” result.
Or worse, we take it in the opposite direction. We decide that the only way we could have possibly done a “bad” thing is because we, ourselves, are “bad.” Thus, we need to create a narrative that supports this idea by identifying as “bad” in some capacity.
It just wouldn’t make sense otherwise! Right?
Cause must follow effect, good begets good, and bad begets bad. Right?
And our judgement of what is good and what is bad is the only way to determine how to make our choices in life!
… right?
Perhaps.
But I say there’s a reason the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden.
Because deciding what is good and what is evil is beyond the capacity of humans.
Our judgement of good and bad is nothing more than our feeble attempt at escaping the paradoxes that we live in. To force reality to fit within a neat, organized, logical box, regardless of how unhealthy, unsustainable, and impractical it may be.
Why? Well, paradoxes aren’t logical and our left-brain-dominant society has decided to elevate logic to godhood.
I can see the reasoning. Logic, by definition, is meant to be infallible. A perfect tool.
If that is the case, then I argue that humans are not fit to wield it, lest we blunder into all manner of errors as we wield the idea of perfection as a weapon without the slightest inkling of what it really means. It is a tool fit only for the hands of gods.
But Love is a tool fit for all hands. Because it is not a tool. It is a way of being. Beyond family and romance, it is the heart of the heart; the reason why our cells have come together to sustain a human life, and all life beyond. Love is the cleansing caress of the river on sandy banks and the stone’s embrace of the Sun’s purifying heat. It is both the beating of wings against the wind and the gravity that holds us to the Earth.
Love is the pathway to compassion, to joy, and to acceptance.
When we meet our failures with acceptance instead of excuses, we are taking responsibility. We are looking for the truth, allowing ourselves to grieve and release the misfortunes, and leveraging that truth as a tool for the growth we desire.
What could be more powerful than the ability to choose how we grow?
Contrary to what social media may have you believe, you do not need the acceptance of others.
When you accept yourself, flaws and all, you have found the greatest treasure of your life.
Because you have found you.
In all your beauty and messiness.
In all your failures and triumphs.
You can be your greatest enemy or your greatest gift.
And you are the only one who can choose which.
So choose wisely.
I know it’s been a while, but I’m really looking forward to being back in the saddle and getting my writing momentum going again. I have a lot more to say about self-judgement and how the stories we tell ourselves shape our lives.
I’ve missed you all, and I’d love to hear from you, and how your journeys through life have been going.
Until then, be kind to yourselves, friends.
Stay hydrated, and as always,