Hard Habit to Break

Ever noticed that when you know you need to tell someone you're sorry, its often harder than it should be. At least, that's how it is for me most the time. And so I did some inward surfing to figure out why its so hard.

Let me tell you a story.

Recently I've been cleaning my "friend" house. I've been tossing aside friendships in which I've determined the "friend" wasn't meeting me half way and didn't add value in my life anymore. It's painful, and not a fun thing to do. It forces you to look and see how you've perhaps been left behind, or have been the one to leave behind.

There's nothing wrong with this "cleaning". As I've aged (or grown up) I've come to realize the people I want in my life, are people who add to my life, not distract from it. Some people will always be "acquaintances", while others I'd like to cultivate the friendship to have it around for a lifetime.

I have friends whom I rarely speak too anymore, yet when we do speak, we pick up where we left off. We were such good friends at a time in our lives, that the kinship of friendship stays with us, no matter how far we've traveled in distance or time. That's a good friend. Of course, these are also the friends whom you have to keep close because they know WAY too much about you to not keep them close.

But then there are the superficial friends. The friends that seem on the surface to be a good friend, but as you experience life together you find that the "friendship" you've forged is nothing more than a black hole. There's really nothing there. A few things in common, a few memories to hold on to, but really, at the sign of trouble or a change in life direction, they're gone. Those are the friends I'm clearing out.

One such friend I had deemed in the latter group, the one in which I felt used and unappreciated. So I tried to clean her out. I tried to toss her aside like a candy wrapper. Only I missed the most important part of that candy bar...the inside. As the days progressed, I swore I wouldn't be the one to email first, or call first. Nope. I was done. Then suddenly it hit me, like lightening striking a metal pole (or the metal plate in my head that had replaced my brain). She was someone I wanted in my life. And the only thing keeping that from happening was me.

And so began the process of being sorry.

I realized that I needed to make the first step and say I give. I'm sorry. And as I wrote that email (what? how else do you communicate these days?) I discovered a valuable emotion about being sorry....pride. My attempt to push her out of my life was all about my pride. My overbearing, in-you-face pride. I sat at my computer and thought about the feeling of I was experiencing of 1) admitting that my pride got in the way, 2) letting go of that pride, and 3) feeling frightened at how close my pride had come to discarding an important relationship in my life.

After we fixed our issue and communicated like adults, all is good. She's not likely to leave my life now...unless of course she decides to toss me to the curb. But I took some time to reflect on the whole situation. Why was pride so powerful in me? Why did I hide behind it so often? I use pride as a shield to protect me from something? Pain? Rejection? What?

I don't have all the answers yet. They're in there and I'll eventually find them. I do know this, saying sorry to someone you care about is liberating. It opens your naked soul and puts in on display for all to see. It shows that you too, are human.

"Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one's status in the eyes of others; And shame is fear of humiliation at one's inferior status in the estimation of others. When one sets his heart on being highly esteemed, and achieves such rating, then he is automatically involved in fear of losing his status." - Lao Tsu