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THE EPILOGUE: BE KIND TO YOURSELF
As angry as I am, I still believe in kindness. It has such power and value and remains terribly underrated! We have in the world what I refer to as a kindness deficit. The default tends to be a defensive stance against both the real and imagined threats out there. Lock your doors, get your dukes up, be ready with a comeback! I think it all starts right here with ourselves. I can be patient, tolerant, forgiving, and understanding with LOTS of other people but rarely with myself. How could I forget to order an extra case of St. George Green Chile Vodka for the start of the NFL season? Walking by each hole on the shelf and wincing because I'm responsible for every single bottle of spirits in this store. If they are out of stock then I need to come up with a back up plan etc times three thousand. Right now, a special order I'm putting together for a customer is messed up because a part of her order didn't arrive and I've got no time to fix it and it burns me up. I don't expect myself to be perfect at this job, I just can't understand why I make any mistakes!
The energy required to beat yourself up about the thing you did wrong is energy that provides no solutions and only succeeds in making you feel worse about an already negative situation. You can and even should acknowledge when a "bad" thing happens and then keep it moving. You were not sitting at home and thinking, you know what, I'm going to get in my car and crash into someone today! You know, I have not said anything terribly inappropriate to someone recently so I'm going to blurt out awful things to this kind person. I'm the host of this dinner party I will forget to defrost the meat then over cook it on high heat and ruin the dinner! Our plans have little to do with the outcome. We didn't make it rain, we didn't make the traffic jam, we didn't give our cohost food poisoning. We wanted it all to work out, but things happened, the vast majority of them were beyond our control!
I should have done this, I should have said that, I should have bought Google stock in 1997 etc etc. Eddie Russel once told me with great enthusiasm that he was increasing his production of his Rye because he actually remembered that I loved it and thought I would be excited, and instead of going that's fantastic news, I immediately asked him to increase it even more than that! Why Keith whyyyy??? Now I have beaten myself up for this blunder around 197 times, well make it 198 and guess what? It still happened, Eddie still talks to me, and the world did not in fact end. I'm going to say other regrettable things to other people, probably today as a matter of fact. I'm not proud, it is a combination of not actually knowing what offends people, enthusiasm for certain topics, and my sincere belief that if it is funny enough it will work out somehow. I have to accept this reality, get better at reading the room and apologizing for my verbal blunders. None of which is accomplished by my berating myself about being a terrible person. I am not in fact a terrible person, and that is actually hard to type and I can feel my fingers reaching for the delete button.....not terrible, Keith Haze is not terrible...because Mussolini and Stalin are terrible, and I've started no World Wars, I've just been rude, dismissive, forgetful, stubborn, mean, overly aggressive, impatient but rarely all at once! No one has died as far as I know, certainly some tears have been shed, and some well-earned vulgarities have been hurled at me. I can't really comfort anyone by telling them about how much worse I used to be!
While there are certainly folks out there that feel all of the scents they produce are roses most of us are our own worst critics. Self awareness is a great skill to posses and prevents us from being a social disaster or worse. Self-flagellation is a different scenario and that one is rarely productive. You did your Keto diet, your sober month, your ten minutes of Spanish class, three times at the gym but you had a croissant, a glass of wine, watched youtube videos, and skipped the gym for a week and that only makes you human and NOT a terrible person! You didn't eat a slice of cake and kick a puppy, you just had some cake. You lost your temper but not for fun, you had a terrible morning and then unfortunately took it out on the wrong person that triggered you. Hopefully you apologized for being mad at an innocent person and both of you were able to move on. We are all walking around living inside our own little worlds and most of the time our actions have nothing to do with anyone else. Even though it appears that so many things are intensely personal they rarely are. "I hate cheesecake so bring anything you like and that will perfect" meanwhile you spent all night making the cheesecake. They don't hate you, you don't hate them, no one was trying to ruin the others life, you're not a terrible friend for not knowing that was the only sweet thing they didn't like and they are not an ingrate for not wanting a dessert they don't enjoy.
We all know people that appear to be kinder, gentler, more thoughtful than ourselves and they might in fact be, but they have bad days too. "Comparison is the thief of joy" is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt and a wise one. I understand how it can feel like everyone is more prepared, having a better time, knows more things, has already done everything you even thought about doing and is somehow in better shape as well! Your at home wondering where on earth all of the time has gone and how come your resume is so short and boring! You open social media, and someone is Para gliding in Costa Rica! Do you even want to do that? Is it possible for you to be happy for them without considering your life a failure? Can you find the joy that is to be had in your own life? The bottle isn't a Van Winkle or whatever, but you are here to enjoy it and with great company. Devoting your life to making it to the coast of Spain or wherever isn't going to be pay off if it just another thing. Two bites into your excellent sandwich is going to be greatly diminished if you are thinking about what is for dinner. The next single barrel is not going to "complete" me or my collection. The next single barrel should just be tasty and keep me motivated to find another. The next trip to Kentucky doesn't need to beat the last trip. I just need to free myself to enjoy it. I need to allow myself to exist as the person that I am. Someone that likes plans, hates loud noises, wants room to improvise, but wants a dose of the familiar to be blended with the new.
We get so anxious about the things we have no power over, and the end result has little to do with these worries. Even if the specific thing that you were worried about does occur you're stressing out about it isn't going to help you when it does actually happen. The Ninja's did in fact come, you remembered to sharpen your Katana, but there are ten of them and they overpowered you and made you eat your least favorite dish "baked Alaska"! We are going to make mistakes, we are going to forget birthdays, behave in a regrettable fashion, and let people down. It is inevitable, so the bigger question is are we going to bash ourselves for hours, days, weeks, and years or are we going to make amends, move a long, and do better next time. Just by being a little kinder to yourself you can become a more productive and happier person that can then spread some of that joy to others. If you are drowning in your own misery, you will not be super useful to anyone else either. I cannot undo any previous mistakes, I cannot prevent all future ones, I can only allow myself the space for both and the room to improve from here. That vicious cycle of "I failed, I suck, I failed because I sucked, I suck for failing, nothing works out, why am I like this?" is so easy to get into but so hard to get out of!!! If we can just hit pause and think "you know what, I'm actually not terrible, I do deserve joy, and I'm going to give myself permission to enjoy my life!".
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