Paying Your Dues

I just watched part of a movie on television. One of the characters messed up and the main character was appalled and upset. The first character cried out that she was sorry as the main character left her. “She’s not sorry. They’re never really sorry,” I literally said out loud to no one in particular. Maybe to my cat—I don’t know.

I quickly noticed the judgmental negativity in my words. Ah! That’s not very accepting. I guess the problem with all of this is that I do see how people think; I do see people’s motives and intentions, and it is especially disturbing when they are selfish and fleeting. Yet again, I am faced with finding some sort of imaginary line between seeing things how they are, and accepting things for how they are. I feel like the two are different. Granted this was a movie, so it is all acting, but this happens a lot in the real world, too. I see through people. If I don’t know anything about them, I realize that, and I don’t hold much confidence in my initial judgments. But as time goes on, and I see patterns, and I start to see what makes them tick, I start to harden my conclusions about them. There’s good and bad, for sure—but let’s say this movie character was a real person. They messed up because they care too much about what other people think, because they don’t have enough courage and self-respect to do the right thing. They have to impress other people in order to feel they have any value. That’s just pathetic. I understand, but it is still wrong. What’s the next step here? It wasn’t one of my hot topics, so I felt no need to get fired up about it. It didn’t press my buttons. Later the cowardly character was presented with another situation where she stood up for what was right. Good for her, but she was still weak before. She doesn’t get a pass for her prior horrible actions.

Maybe my next lesson in acceptance is to figure out when someone has “paid their dues”. That doesn’t necessarily mean external punishment. On the contrary. They need to “get” it in order to have “paid their dues”. They need to see and feel how wrong they were. They need to fix it, and then feel ashamed at how they acted. Wait, does that sound horrible? Yeah, kinda. Another lesson I still need to learn is when has someone made up for their mistakes? What mistakes are unforgivable, and how much thought, growth and action can make up for the ones that can be forgiven?

Those are questions I can’t answer right now. I think those are down the line. I’m not there yet. For now, it is good to acknowledge that this is still an area of growth for me, and I should focus on trying to understand someone’s side when they make a mistake. Eventually I’ll figure out what comes next. Clearly we all can’t just go around forgiving everyone for screwing up. You can’t just simply forgive people for stealing, murdering, lying, cheating and other horrible things. They truly did something wrong. That has to be acknowledged. But for me, the first step is to try to understand where they are coming from, and forget all the “You messed up! How could you? Who does that? You know better! You must be evil,” comments that my mind spits out. Yeah, you can’t just forgive everyone right away, but you also can’t NEVER forgive and hold onto the past.

This learning acceptance thing is a process, and my first step is to put myself in their shoes, without fighting it. I could always do that, but I always thought, “Still! Still, that isn’t the right thing to do! Still, they should know better!” But that is me putting myself in their situation and still doing what I know is right. No—I have to forget myself and really look deep into where they are coming from. It’s not like it’s hard—I just have to actually do it, and make my morals shut up for a second. I’m not abandoning my morals. I just have to put them on mute so I can hear everything else going on.

Nice. We’re getting to some good stuff, now. “Now we’re cooking with peanut oil,” as Phil Robertson says.