I Was Wrong
Life is supposed to be an adventure, I think.
We’re supposed to depart from the path set before us, to trample a bit on the flowers. To ask why we’re going this way.
There’s supposed to be tension between our own creative impulses and the gravity of tradition. So often this materializes in real, tangible interactions and interpersonal turf wars.
By lingering on the path too long, I am denying myself and my creativity.
By venturing out too far for too long, I am perhaps victimizing the ecosystem. Or the communities and people that set the path for us long ago.
In this way, to live well is to hurt others. Inevitably, even if unintentionally. Sometimes the lawn has to be mowed. Or the seeds from trampled flowers harvested so that something else can grow. A life of adventure is, then, partly a life of destruction. Of dismantling. Of burning down.
Sometimes the forest has to be cleared to make way.
As we do this clearing — or at least when we look back on it — it is important we recognize the cost of our adventure, too. Perhaps our destructive/creative journey into the wilds was reckless at times, the harm caused unintentional. And while this recognition does not change the landscape we’ve scarred, perhaps it does change us.
In more cases than we can count, it is possible to be right and wrong at the same time.
What does it mean to extend radical forgiveness, even of ourselves? What does it mean to extend radical humility?