emotional maturity

Different Kinds of “I’m Sorry”

Ron Johnson appreciation, communication, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

“I’m sorry:” a very important statement. Very, very important. Most people should be able to express these words at least once a day, and possibly several times a day. But what does “I’m sorry” mean, or more accurately what can it mean? For some reason “I’m sorry” has fallen into disuse in America, and perhaps it was never part of our character the way it seems to be in most every other culture. There are many aspects of “I’m sorry” that I would like to tackle in this humble piece, but let’s start with different kinds of “I’m Sorry.”

Different Kinds of “I’m Sorry”

I have continued to put “I’m sorry” in quotation marks because “I’m sorry” does not entirely equate with apology, nor should it. There are at least the following meanings of the expression “I’m sorry:”

  • Apology. When I apologize for something, this is a personal acknowledgement that I have failed in some action, although this apology could also be for some inaction on my part, namely something I have said, something I have done, something I have failed to say, or something I have failed to do.
  • Shared grief. This is an occurrence where I express this statement to someone with whom I share the grief that the person is experiencing. I may have caused this grief or the grief may have come from another source.
  • Disingenuous statement. This occurs when someone says “I’m sorry” with an important caveat…BUT. Hence, this is the frequently occurring, “I’m sorry but…,” then to be filled with some kind of justification or disregard.

Apologies

It is an extremely important element in human-to-human interaction, to be able to apologize when one has erred in what s/he did or said (or as noted, when one has erred in failing to say or do something). For example, it is important to say “I’m sorry” when you might have:

  • Stepped in front of someone in line, probably by accident
  • Failed to remember an occasion that was important to the other person, while it might not have been important to you. Likewise, you might be late for a dinner engagement even though you are not a person known for being prompt.
  • Making a statement that was offensive to someone, perhaps by using a swear word that is common to you and to your community but not common to your friend.
  • Bumping into the car in front of you.
  • Raising your voice in a discussion that led to an argument rather than a debate
  • Failing to express yourself when you had an important opinion that might have served the community but caused you to be disliked by someone
  • Disregarding someone’s preferred way of table manners because you didn’t think that such things were important.

Most of the time I have offended, hurt, or harmed someone, I have done this unintentionally.

I didn’t mean to do it

Of course, you didn’t mean to do it. You offended someone in some way, such as the ways I have noted above unintentionally, which is a very important fact. Once you get this concept in your mind, namely that you didn’t mean to hurt someone, you will have achieved the first and most important element in being able to apologize.

I often note that the Hebrew Scriptures’ book of Leviticus is comprised of about 450 “rules” of life. Notably, every one of these rules has to do with “sin,” but more importantly for our purposes, every one of these rules begins with, “If you sin by…. (fill in the blank) unintentionally, you must make amends for this sin by….” For instance, if you sin by sleeping with your neighbor’s wife, you must make amends in some way….  The essence of this matter of sin and the result is twofold: you have caused some harm to someone, and you need to make amends for this harm in some way. Most importantly, however, these “sins” (we do not have time to unpack this interesting biblical word) are all unintentional…with the exception of one “sin”: intentional sin. For all these 400-some sins, Leviticus (Actually God speaking in Leviticus) suggests that there are ways for atonement or reparation. I believe all of these “sins” are ones what involve offense brought to another person in some way. But there is one “sin” that is quite different: “If anyone sins intentionally…,” the situation is quite different. Such a person is to be thrown out of the community. Now, while I might not quite understand or even agree with throwing someone out of the community, whatever community that might be, it is interesting to me that all but one of these 400-some sins are unintentional. I believe this is the case for most things we do that offend, hurt, or harm other people: we unintentionally bring harm to someone. Sadly, I can recall scores, if not hundreds, of times when I have brought offense to people over my nearly 77 years of life. You might read my blog of a few years ago on my regrets for some examples of my errors in life, which are many.

The times when people intentionally hurt one another are almost always in reaction to having been hurt. I wrote a blog entitled, “Hurt People Hurt People,” borrowing the title for a book published 30 years ago. When someone intentionally says or does something to hurt or harm the other person, these are times when one has been hurt her/himself and has had a kneejerk reaction to “hurt back,” usually not knowing that the original person who inflicted hurt on you did not hurt you intentionally. So I won’t waste much time with this intentional kind of hurt, which should result in an apology with the words, “I’m sorry.” When we hurt someone who has hurt us, this is a reaction of anger coming from having been hurt, much of our (unintentionally) hurting someone comes from fear. These are tough situations that we all find ourselves in our human relationships. It behooves us to realize that when we hurt someone intentionally, it is almost always in reaction to having been hurt. Much more frequently, however, we have hurt someone out of naiveté or ignorance.

Hurt inflicted out of naiveté or ignorance

The mistakes of our youth should largely be classified as those of naiveté (or ignorance), feeling, “I just didn’t know that if I said a certain thing, I would hurt or offend someone.” Growing up should include maturity in understanding the effect of what I say or do. Extraverts like me can look at the things we said that were hurtful that we shouldn’t have said, whereas introverts more likely will see things that they should have said that could have been helpful. Doers like me will see things that we shouldn’t have done, whereas dreamers will see things that they should have done. I shouldn’t have got married (the first time). Several people I know would say that they should have got married. These failures of youth are understandable and forgivable but some such mistakes have lifelong results. I know a lot more people who shouldn’t have got married than I do people who should have got married.

It’s not only young people who say or do things that hurt someone else. We do that all the time. Deb and I devoted an entire chapter in our recent book to the central concept of hurt. If we really knew how often we hurt people, we would all be a lot more careful if what we say or do, but then we wouldn’t be human if we watched everything that carefully. As noted above, introverts tend to watch so carefully what they say, that their errors are usually in not saying what they feel. This whole matter of our hurting one another frequently and being hurt just as frequently is not to be taken too lightly. We just need to be able to see that we have unintentionally hurt someone and be ready to say so. This does not mean we go around being apologetic all the time, but rather being able to simply see what something that was said or done (or failed to be said or failed to be done) out of naiveté needs to be seen, understood, and apologized for. But it is hard to do so.

Why is it hard to apologize?                                                                     

I didn’t mean to do it. This is the whole matter of hurt being unintentional for the most part. I often say to patients, “Of course, you didn’t mean to hurt her, but you did, and you need to apologize.” Not many men take kindly to this advice.

She shouldn’t be hurt by what I said. Again, you didn’t mean to hurt her, but you did, and the most important emotional element is not what you said, meant to say, or thought you said, but what she felt.

I feel ashamed of having hurt someone. This is the largest part of the difficulty in apologizing and it exists in every person I have ever met. The shame level that exists in most people in tragic, and it comes out when we are “caught” in some way, very often caught in having hurt someone. I don’t have time to deal with the shame element more here, but you might look up the blog on shame and guilt.

I am afraid. The essence of shame is being afraid, namely being afraid of being wrong or being criticized. Unfortunately, there is a terrible fear in most people of being wrong, of making mistakes, or being criticized. True maturity, especially emotional maturity, is displayed with someone being unafraid of mistakes or criticism. I don’t know anyone who has reached this level of emotional maturity…including myself.

The other person doesn’t deal well with it. While some people graciously accept an apology, there is an odd phenomenon that occurs with the offended party when the offender offers an apology: they then say all the other things that the offender has done. So, if you apologize to someone, be prepared for an onslaught of criticism of all your other mistakes in life.

You said or did the right thing. This is real important. There are times when you actually say or do the right thing, but this right thing still hurts your friend. This phenomenon is clear with children whom we chastise, limit, or punish but then feel sad because we know that our child is suffering. This having done or said the right thing that hurts someone is not limited to children. Good leaders, whether professional, familial, or professional, need to challenge, hence criticize from time to time. It behooves a good leader to know that however true the challenge is, the person hearing the challenge will be hurt. And if you’re a leader, you need to say “I’m sorry” to them. This brings me to the second kind of “I’m sorry:” shared grief.

“I’m sorry” as an expression of shared grief

This may be the most important of all “I’m sorry” statements, but it is the hardest to grasp, especially in some circumstances. It is sometimes easy to share grief, sometimes difficult, and sometimes very paradoxical. If done honorably, honestly, and clearly, it can be one of the most profound interpersonal experiences that we can have.

Sometimes easy: in a previous blog I related the several experiences of having someone share the grief that Deb and I experienced after the death of our daughter. Some of these experiences were simple, like the Starbuck’s barista hearing from Deb of our loss immediately coming the counter and giving a Deb a hug…along with a free espresso, or the many simple expressions of grief that people have shared with me over the past 15 months, sometimes after these 15 months have passed because I hadn’t had the chance of seeing someone for that period of time. Other expressions of shared grief have been quite profound like the woman we met by chance at the headwaters of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota, the woman we met by chance at the top of the learning tower of Pisa in Italy, or the woman we met by chance not far from our up north cabin on a hike that Krissie, her kids, and we used to take. In all of these circumstances, when we made a simple comment about our loss, these previously unknown women cried, hugged us, and said those precious words, “I’m so sorry.” I hope you have experienced this kind of shared grief, whether on the giving or the receiving side. It is easy to give and it is easy to receive…but not always.

Sometimes difficult.

It is often difficult for people to share grief because they simply do not know what to say. Some people say too much while others say nothing. Our “up north” neighbor heard of our loss while we happened to pass each other on the lake we share. This woman must have said, “I don’t know what to say” a dozen times within minutes of hearing of our loss. Interestingly, she shared how she had lost a young child 40 years previously. Another person whom I know quite well is yet unable to say much of anything because he also lost a son, not six months before Krissie died. His grief is so great that he has a hard time even mentioning our daughter by name, much less the name of his son. It was difficult for a new patient I saw just a few months ago, and he said nothing when I made reference to “loss” in the context of my hearing of his losses in life. Later, he told me that he “didn’t know what to say” because he didn’t want to sound disingenuous. He later said, quite simply, that he has never been particularly good at expressing any emotion aside from anger, a plague that many men suffer. The difficulty that people have with saying “I’m sorry,” whether for someone’s loss like our recent loss, or because they have causes some hurt, is often due to a combination of not having emotional words at their disposal, but more often due to their own lack of personal emotional groundedness. Personal groundedness is hallmarked primarily by knowing how you feel, expressing these feelings when appropriate to do so, and frequently knowing the feelings but wisely keeping the feelings to oneself out of propriety. Simply put, one can express shared grief if one knows and values what he/she feels. If this is the case, one can share the love of shared grief without hesitation. Sadly, many people do not have this personal security.

Sharing grief that is paradoxical

This is one of the most important times that we can share grief but it is rarely experienced because of its very paradoxical nature and because it takes an immense amount of personal security. Sharing grief with someone who has suffered some kind of loss is easy if you can easily find some kind of human connectedness, but it very difficult to share grief with someone who has suffered a loss that you think is a good thing. It is hard to share the grief that I child has when you discipline him or her. I just talked to the parents of a child for whom I did a psychological evaluation. One of my suggestions was to replace the shame-inducing rhetorical questions, like “what’s wrong with you” with statements of being disappointed. One of these parents then said, but our child gets so hurt and sad when you say that you are disappointed. Better that you and your child feel “disappointed,” which is tantamount to feeling sad, then you’re being angry and your child feeling ashamed.

Hard as it is to share grief with a child that is necessary, it is ten times harder to share grief with an adult who has suffered some kind of loss that you think is good for him or her. This is hard to explain so allow me to give you an example. Just yesterday I heard from a good friend of mine with whom I share just three years of life, namely those of being in the same fraternity house in college. I didn’t see Jack for more than 40 years until he somehow found me on LinkedIn about 10 years ago, leading to occasional get-togethers and a rare time playing golf. It was easy to reconnect with Jack because we share much the same faith (while not exactly) and are both outgoing and expressive. It was hard for Jack to hear that I intended to vote for Hillary four years ago and even harder for him to hear that I intended to vote for Biden this year. Jack is part of the 70 some percent of evangelical Christians who vote for Republicans regardless of anything else aside from their political persuasion. Jack and I have had some forthright, but challenging email connections over the past few months due to the huge emotionality in the country over the recent election. His most recent email expressed his dismay over Trump’s loss. I found it a challenge, but also honest for me to tell him that I was “sorry” for his loss and shared his grief. I must admit I had some consternation over saying “I’m sorry” to Jack because I was so relieved that Trump did not get reelected, but I acknowledged my own joy at this defeat privately to myself while also feeling a genuine love for Jack and feeling compelled to share his grief. When I told Deb what I had written to Jack, she was a bit concerned how that might seem that I was sad that Biden won, which I most certainly was not. I suggested that this was an example of paradoxical sharing of grief. I could feel joyful that Biden won on the one hand, while on the other feel great sorrow with my good friend for his having to put up a forthcoming Biden presidency.

I do not always act or speak so generously, but why would I not do so? Only if I was unable to free myself from my own self-interest and be more interested in my friend. Consider this most difficult situation, this paradoxical situation, where you are glad that something happened, but feel a shared sorrow for someone who feels quite distressed about the same event. This can seem ingenuous, but it is not. There is, however, a truly ingenuous “I’m sorry.”

Ingenuous “I’m sorry.”

The key identifying words to ingenuous apologies are “Well” and “but.” Let me explain. An ingenuous expression of “I’m sorry” begins with one word soon to be followed by the other, e.g., “Well, I’m sorry, but….” Do you know what I mean? This is the expression that many people, you included, I included, have said when we are not sorry at all. Rather, we use “I’m sorry” meaning quite the opposite. Had I been ingenuous with Jack, I could have said, “Well, Jack, I’m sorry but Trump is an idiot.” I have said such things, but happily many years ago, and now I am ashamed for that must egregious indiscretion and lack of love. I won’t now to choose to spend much time with ingenuous expressions except to note that they also originate from one’s lack of genuine self-esteem and certainly a lack of an ability to reach beyond one’s own feelings to understand the other person. With my experience with Jack, I can reach into my recovering Republican nature and see much good in conservative politics, but more importantly, my love for Jack is more important than my feeling of joy with Biden’s victory.

I leave you with the suggestion that you consider saying “I’m sorry” in the more positive ways and feel the joy that comes from honest apologies and shared griefs. By the way, you don’t actually have to say these exact words, I’m sorry. You might prefer “my bad,” which is all the more contemporary, the mea culpa that is classic, or other cognates of the feelings that occur when someone is hurt, mistaken, or criticized,

It’s The War

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, political, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Deb and I really enjoy Masterpiece Theater, which comes on PBS pretty regularly. Actually, we don’t watch any other channels aside from the three PBS channels we get over the air. We’ve had “air only” TV forever. Occasionally, however, when we happen to be in a motel where there are 600 cable channels, we waste a few minutes channel flipping only to find nothing that suits our fancy and immediately note how intolerable commercials are for us to watch. The Masterpiece mysteries are generally a mix of one or more unsolved murders, usually a predominant police inspector, a subordinate police officer, and several intertwining stories, some of which are red herrings. One of the things we like about the mysteries, as well as much of BBC television is that the characters are all flawed in some way: maybe grumpy (Lewis), alcoholic (Tennison) theologically questioning (Hathaway), or some other minor or major malady. So, they all appear to be quite “human” with these warts of life. One of our favorite mysteries is Foyle’s War, which has the main inspector as a wonderfully introverted thinking man assisted by an equally wonderfully extraverted feeling woman. Foyle’s War is set in southern England throughout the six years of World War II. Among the interesting things about this series, as is true with most Masterpiece mysteries, is that Inspector Foyle is often presented with dilemmas that have legal, ethical, moral, and personal implications, all within the context of the war that goes on in the background. So, it’s not possible for Foyle to simply go about doing police work without frequently encountering challenges that have more to do with the war than with local crime. In general then, we have someone trying heartily to settle criminal matters faithful to the laws of England while being in a situation of war, which by its very nature could be conceived as “criminal,” namely killing people. An interesting expression that Foyle’s assistant (Sam = Samantha) says when they encounter one of these dilemmas is, “It’s the War.” So, “It’s the War” means that things are not so clean and clear when there is a war going on. Foyle’s son, who is a pilot in the Royal Air Force and Sam are an item for a while but then he finds another woman and writes Sam a “Dear John” letter. Sam’s response was, “It’s the War,” as she frequently says when other dilemmas occur, like the military protecting a Nazi war criminal because he is “useful” for information about the Nazi machine. Now what does “It’s the War” have to do with things psychological? Lots.

Our current “war”

We’re in a “war” as we speak. The current war is three-fold: biological, political, and cultural. Specifically, the war against the Covid virus, the war against perceived dangerous political forces, and the war against cultural forces. I don’t have to elaborate on the nature of this current manifold war but to note that this war affects us every day, for many of us, daily, and for many of us hourly. There is never a newspaper nor a new broadcast that doesn’t include comments on one or more of these three elements of this “war.” We are deluged with information, mostly on the negative side of things, with these three elements, e.g. the virus is spreading, the Black Lives protests turn violent, or some hateful comment about President Trump or former Vice President Biden. “It’s a war” has the right ring to it as I try to compare what it might have been like for mothers and fathers of fighting men and women in World War II, or in any other war for that matter, to think that their children, husbands, brothers and sisters, sons, and daughters might be killed on any day. What must it have been like to hear stories daily of bombings and other dangerous activities that were going on during those terrible days of 1939-1945. I can only imagine. My proposition is that the “war” we are currently in is much the same as this previous war mostly because of the daily/hourly reports of one or more of the elements of this war. Consider what effect this deluge of information, almost always dangerous and otherwise difficult to hear, has on us. I content that we need to be cognizant of the war that is currently going on as we deal with the day-to-day events, stresses, opportunities, and disappointments that occur to all of us in one day. My contention is that we need to consider that the “war” affects how we think, how we feel, and what we do as we encounter or otherwise normal daily events, choices, and dilemmas because when there is a war, “all bets are off” and “nothing is the way it used to be”. Hard enough to think about doing the right thing, feel about doing the right thing, and then doing the right thing when we can think, feel, and act somewhat clearly. No so in a war.

Engaging daily events, decisions, and actions when you’re in a war

Simply stated, you cannot go about business as you have been doing before the war. You cannot think, feel, or act as you have felt, thought, and acted before the war because the war is always with you and affects all thoughts, feelings, and actions. Most importantly, you need to take great caution with the “acting” part of that threesome more than the thinking and feeling. Yet, it is also important to note that much of your time will be spent in the “feeling” part, and then this feeling part will drift into your “thinking.” Let me explain:

  • Let’s say that you and your life’s partner are not doing well, and maybe you have been in therapy with someone, maybe me, who has been working on such things as personality structure, gender differences, communication, and the whole matter of feeling as I do with most everyone I see. Previous to the war, you and I could perhaps discuss the differences you and your partner have in personality and gender. Maybe we’ve made some progress in communication, like maybe she’s an “analyst” and you are a “lover” in temperament. Now, however, you two are dealing with one or more elements of the war:
    • She thinks you should wear a mask all the time; you disagree
    • She is a Trump lover and you are most certainly not
    • You tend to value the cultural challenges that are occurring in America; she thinks that protests are all riots.
    • So it is hard for you two to deal with other things in your life together and your lives separately because of the war intruding on almost every aspect of your life
  • Or, you may be that individual who came to see someone, like me perhaps, because you wanted to get over your life-long tendency to be angry. You are a businessman but also someone who wants to make some social impact on the world but:
    • Your kids are being inundated by “liberal” education like when you seventh grader and her classmates were asked “what pronoun do you prefer in reference to yourself.” You think this is premature and perhaps harmful.
    • You would really like to hire some people in great need and thought about contacting some agency that deals with Blacks who are out of work. You think that you could offer some good wages. But you are afraid of what you might get and trouble you might have because you have never had a Black work for you
    • You find yourself angry at the protests-turn-riots and don’t know how to consider hiring Blacks who might riot on your property
    • You have never been afraid to walk the streets, but now you are
  • Or, maybe you’re a pastor who came to see someone, maybe like me, because you were looking to improve in your self-understanding and serve your congregation better, but now:
    • You admit to be left-of-center…maybe pretty far left…but also have some good people in your congregation who are quite different
    • You want to make your church more effective in all ways but can’t have regular in-house meetings
    • You have a lot of time on your hands, something that you have always wanted, but now it feels a bit “lazy” not to be doing your normal pastoral duties like visiting nursing homes and the like
    • You also might, say, have three young children who demand a kind of 24/7 attention and you certainly want to protect them from Covid.
  • Or, maybe, you’re just a guy who wants to have fun in life, like going swimming in a pool, going to a concert, or going out to dinner, all of which have significant restrictions and challenges

So, how do you manage your life that is now in the midst of a war when you have things that used to be the most important things in your life, like work, children, play, and eating, when it seems things like biological agents, political agents, and cultural agents are always in your face?

Facing life’s challenges in a war

  1. Remember that “It’s the war.” Just remember the “war” part of this, not necessarily the cultural, political, and biological elements. This means that the “war” is always in the background, always present in your thoughts and feelings, always going on whether you remember it or not.
  2. This remembering that the war is going on does not really mean that “all bets are off.” You can still think, emote, and act being responsible to all these representations of how you feel, noting that “feeling” includes how you feel physically, emotionally, cognitively, and actively. You have to feel as clearly as you can despite the fact that the war is always in the background, you have to think clearly, and feel emotionally, and eventually do some things. The “war” is not an excuse for irresponsibility.
  3. Giving “the war” due diligence means that you acknowledge that there is always a certain unnatural flavor to what you feel, think, and do. Allowing this “bad flavor” is akin to allowing you to eat some peas that have had a bit too much salt in their cooking. You get used to think and feel with this bad flavor, the war won’t be the predominant factor in your deciding on a courses of action. You eat the peas despite the undue salt.
  4. Admit to you colleagues, friends, and intimates the obvious: It’s the war. Once you do that, you will take the larger part of the war out of what you actually decide to do. Tell other people that “it’s the war” and explain the perspective. I have been surprised at the number of people who have profited from this perspective.
  5. Be aware of everyone around you also being in “the war” and give them a wide berth of their thoughts and statements, if not perhaps all of their actions. Let them shoot their mouths off about Trump or whatever. It’s the war does not mean you have to let go of kindness and compassion for people in distress…which is everyone.
  6. Know that anything you do may be done because of the war. Some things just have to be done, like breathing, eating, playing, working, and voting. You may not do these things with the best of spirit or even the best of thought, but you must do these things. Like breathing: this is the first thing that stops when you are afraid, like when you are startled: you stop breathing. Mindfulness and the like can be very useful during times of stress when you feel a lot, think a lot, and don’t know what to do. Breathe more deeply.
  7. Remember the war will be over. My best guess is a year from now, but I have no better idea than anyone else and certainly less than true scientists. The 30 Years War ended, so did the 100 Years War, as did the Civil War, and all the other wars.
  8. Remember that this is a time of uncertainty because of the war. Allow for “not knowing” but don’t let your “not knowing” be an excuse for inaction.
  9. Govern your fear. I would like suggest that you give up entirely on fear, but that is impossible for most people however desirable it is to be completely free of fear.
  10. Do you best to avoid the trap of finding an easy and simple solution to something that needs to be done, a position on the cultural situation, the political situation, and the biological situation. Anything else is posturing. However hard it is, for instance, to admit that Trump is bright and successful in many ways, while simultaneously admitting that he is quite flawed in character development, you will be better off trusting both of these things than only one.

The H’end of the Road

Ron Johnson Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, Opportunity, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

This is actually an interlude from my previous and forthcoming blogs on “the end of” series. There is a similarity to the “end of” to this blog, but it is a different twist.I’m going to have a little fun before I get to the meat of this blog, the essence of which I think is quite important for many people, perhaps all people at some time in their lives. But I want to indulge myself in one of the things that I live best: language. I am by far not nearly the skilled linguist that many people are although it would be a fond wish to be able to speak Russian, French, Swedish, Spanish or German fluently after having studied each of these languages enough to say, “hello” or “where’s the bathroom?” I also studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in school and still am able to parse out a word that might have such origins. You might wonder what the “h’end” of the road might mean, so let me tell you. Deb and I lived in Newfoundland, Canada for four years, a most glorious experience and our only long-term cross-cultural experience, not of the depth of someone living in Zambia, grant you, but Newfoundland was a good place for us to be and we yet treasure this very unique province and retain good friends there. Due to its Irish heritage, much of which shows in its music and subculture, there was a tendency of many Newfoundlanders to add and subtract the letter “H” to words seemingly at random, but of course for Newfoundlanders it was not random. For instance, the letter “H” was often added to words that began with a vowel and just as often deleted from words that began with an H. We heard a person speaking about her “h’anger”, not “anger.” Likewise, I heard a woman talk about her child who was very “’yper,” not “hyper.” I came quite certain that there is rhyme and reason to the shifting of the letter H, but I never got the hang of it. However, I remember one very distinct instance when we were visiting an “outport” Newfoundland town and asked a lady where a particular bed and breakfast might be located. Without missing a beat, she said, “Sure, I know where it is. It is at the ‘h’end of the road just past the h’apple stand. I ‘ope that I was ‘elpful.” A young person in our car repeated her exact words with the emphasis on “the h’end of the road.”

Enough of my linguistic jostling. Now I want to talk about the real issue: when people come to the “end of the road,” whimsically called “the h’end of the road.”

The End of the Road

My thoughts about the end of the road (or the h’end of the road) began just a couple days ago in a conversation with a patient who said that he seemingly had come to “the end of the road.” We talked about this vision that he had, and then examined this phenomenon, namely with the contexts of the future, the present and the past. I have since shared this picture with several other people in my office who I thought might profit from this picture, which we might call a metaphor or even a vision of what lies ahead for them in life. Over the recent three days I have found myself using this end of the road picture quite relevant to several of the people (all men, of course) I have seen. Importantly, almost all of these people have all been in their 60’s including:

  • A man, 67, whose wife left him for another man and now that that man has left the “new man,” he wants to come back home
  • A man, 63, whose wife has also left him, but not for another man, but rather because she admits that she never should have married him, and has been relationally unhappy for 30-odd years
  • A man, 65, who is single and never married, who is looking at the rest of his life, which includes who he might be with, what he might do for a profession, and where he might live
  • A man, 62, who has had a good and sustainable relationship for several years with a woman who has been a very good friend and conversationalist, but now it seems that their differences might suggest that the relationship might not be sustainable any longer. He is also looking heartily about his profession and the place where he might live.
  • A man, closer to 50, who has just lost his very successful job, has lived unhappily for many years in a marriage, and all things seem up in the air for him.
  • A man, 58, who has been typically and frequently angry all his life and is only now looking at his deeper feelings and how to communicate them
  • A man, not even close to 50’s or 60’s, who is looking at a life that includes possible drastic changes in his vocation, his family relationships, religious orientation, and even a more significant element of his very nature
  • A man in his late 50’s with a good marriage, good professional life, good house, and generally a good life who has fallen into a significant depression because, despite the fact that he has been a good person all his life, he hasn’t attended to his feelings.

All of these men seem to be facing what I come to a place in their lives where things in the future seem to be quite uncertain and vague, but more importantly, an opportunity for a good life, if perhaps quite different from what their lives have been over the past decades. The surface questions include:

  • Should I be married or otherwise with this person in my life?
  • Should I continue in my current profession, find another one, or should I not be working at all in any kind of formal job?
  • What kind of financial security do I need for this new life that I might have?
  • What might I lose if I move into this new life?
  • Is there any urgency for me to make a decision?
  • What are the external factors that I might face in this new life?

These are the objective and practical questions that they are asking, but I believe that there are also subtly asking subjective questions, like:

  • Can I hang on to the security what I have had up to this point, like the security of house, family, marriage, profession, or gender identity?
  • What dangers are there in this “new life” and am I prepared to face these dangers?
  • What abilities and experiences can I take along with me that might be useful?
  • What relationships, property, feelings, and beliefs do I need to leave behind?
  • Can I have the best of both worlds, meaning the past and the future?

Wanting it both ways

The answer to the last question, “Can I have the best of the past and the future?” the answer is “yes.” Yes, you can have the best of the past, but you can’t have the experiences of the past, the relationships as they were in the past, the property of the past, the money of the past, and the job/profession of the past. You can have the best of the past but not the things of the past. What is the best of the past? It is what you have loved, what you have lost, and what you have learned. You can’t have the kind of relationship you had before. You can’t have the property you had in the past. You can’t have the ideas you had in the past. You can’t have the family you had in the past. In other words, you can’t have it the way it was…but you can take the best of the past into the future. The best of the past is what you loved, how you loved, and the memories you have of such things. You might stay in a marriage, a relationship, a job, a profession, a house, or a city, but your new life will not be the same. You will have a new perspective of life and life around you built on what you have done, said, felt, and thought. This is the best of the past, but it is not the past carried into the future. You don’t forget about the past, nor do you allow yourself to simply live in nostalgia of the past. Rather, you will be looking at the present and the future with the knowledge, skills, experiences, successes, failures, and mistakes that you made in the past.

The people whom I made reference to above said to me something like:

  • I don’t want to lose what I have with my wife, so I am afraid of challenging the situation that I find myself. This is scary.
  • I can’t see clearly where I should live so I will just stay here because it is safe. Anywhere else is scary.
  • I love my partner for sure but maybe if I wait for a bit longer, she will change or I will change so we don’t argue all the time. Anything else is scary.
  • I don’t think I can make it without the money I was making in my previous job. I’m scared of living in some kind of poverty
  • I want to keep on telling my wife that I love her hoping that this “will get through to her.” I’m afraid that if I don’t, she will never come home.

Note the operative word? Scared. They are scared of doing anything, saying anything, or even daring to feel anything because they don’t want to lose what they have had. I think in all of these cases that they have already lost what they want, most likely will never get it back, and they are putting their heads in the sand hoping for some miracle. They are all at the “h’end” of the road, the road of their lives up to this point. And they can’t have it both ways: they can’t have what they have had and what they might have if they really move forward. But how to they do this? how do they “move forward” into their new lives?

Moving into the new life

I think of all of these people, people of any age, who have come to the end of the road in some way (or a combination of ways), need to face the fact that the new life needs to be substantially different spiritually than in their previous lives. I could also use the term “emotionally” because emotion is a significant part of moving into anything new, but this new life certainly has an important emotional ingredient: No fear. I also call this the “second half of life,” however old the person is, because this “second half of life” is substantially different from the first “half.”

  1. You can’t enter a new life with any kind of fear, none whatsoever. Sound impossible? It is. I state this “no fear” element because fear cannot be the dominant factor in their lives. Recall the fears noted in all of these people:
    1. Fear of losing wife
    2. Fear of being discovered
    3. Fear on not enough money
    4. Fear of what people think of me
    5. Fear of failure
    6. Fear of criticism

All of this has to go, or at the very least, be at a minimum level

  1. You can’t take “the best” of the past. This is the love you have, the successes you have had, the mistakes you made, the things that happened to you. In a nutshell, you take into the future what you have learned in the past.
  2. You will most certainly have some of what you had in the first part of your life, like relationship, property, friends, and the like. But you will not be hanging on to these things, which has kept you impotent in life.
  3. You will love more, love better, lose better, and love again. It may be the same person, place, or property, but it will not be loving with a closed hand because you now know that you will most certainly lose everything that you love at some time, which means people, place, property, and ideas.
  4. You will make a difference in the world. That will be a place where you are no longer interested in acquisition or approval, but rather the opportunity to be of service.
  5. But first you will have to “collect” the past so you can use the best of the past.

Collecting the past

  1. I am not a particular fan of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) while I acknowledge that AA has helped countless millions of people. I do like what they call the 4th step: making a moral inventory of oneself. I would not so much limit this important “step” to morality but to life in general, specifically, at successes and failures
    1. Examine your life and see all the love you have had, all the successes you have had, all the losses you have had, all the good people in your life, and most importantly, how you have been of value to the world
    2. Examine your life and see the regrets you have had. The things you should have done but didn’t; the things you should have done but did; the things you said that you shouldn’t have said but did; the things you didn’t say that you should have said but didn’t.
    3. Draw from these good, and not-so-good experiences what you have learned
    4. Keep these things in your mind, not so much to remember what was said or done, but what you learned from all of it
  2. Store these things in your heart. You may tell someone, or you may not, but have no fear of telling or not telling. It is not approval or disapproval that is important, but rather having the knowledge and wisdom you have had.
  3. Now you are ready to look forward but be careful to avoid falling into “wanting it both ways,” like dragging all the money, property, and people into the future. Whatever you retain for the future will be in a new light because now you can love knowing that whatever you love, you will lose.

Now, are you ready to use the end of the road as a good starting place?