Impact

There is a part of being human that I’ve always found difficult. I hope that it doesn’t have to always be this way, this hard, but it always has been, and I want to try and do something about it. I’m afraid though. This is one of those things that requires me to ask for help. If that isn’t difficult enough, I know to get at this, in a real way, I have to ask for help from you, the very people my blindness impacts the most.

I can’t help it. I’m only human. That is not only my overused excuse, but it happens to be true.  Addressing this issue is probably going to take all the compassion I can muster, and all you can muster too. Being human means I generate impacts (often hurtful) that I’m not aware of. I am clumsy and blind, and I don’t know know it as much as I need to. Because all of this is so, I need you, and I know you need me. I would like to believe we could deal with the impacts we necessarily have upon, and with, each other.

I am one of, what my friend Jim calls, the “not-sees.” I don’t see some things very well.  What happens is that I do a lot of damage — I’m like the proverbial bull in the china shop — because I’m looking somewhere else, or I’m just unable to see all of the consequences of my actions.

I’ve done a lot of therapy, hell, I’ve been a therapist for a long time. Amongst the many things I did in both those roles, has been operate by the belief that I (one) could stop bumping into, and hurting (and sometimes being hurt by), people. I have been wrong about that. This is another example, though pretty ordinary, of how blind I can be.

Lately, I’ve come to see that my blindness is part of being human. I can see, only partly at best. That awareness has made it easier for me to apologize, but does nothing to help me cause less harm. Now my hope rests upon the company I keep. I know I’m going to bump into them from time to time —I’m fond of saying community is a contact sport — but it seldom goes easily when I do. I’m not pretending I’m not blind —I’m not a climate change denier (claiming we humans have no effect on the world) — in fact, I’m too aware that I do, and it leaves me feeling a regret I have a hard time getting past.

So my basic self-image right now contains an awareness that I am perpetually hurtful to the one’s I say I love. Since I say I love community that poses a real challenge to me. I want to do more than just feel bad about it. So, I’ve come to asking for your help. I know if I could just forgive everyone I wouldn’t have to feel this way, but I don’t want to issue a blanket pardon, that doesn’t adequately address the harm in the world that I (and others) seem to be a part of.

I realize I can’t make all of the hurt go away. I know that pain is sometimes the way Mystery gets in, but it seems that there is more hurt in the world than necessary. I’d like to be part of that changing some.  And, I’m just foolish enough, or immature enough, to think that it can be different, for me, and for all of us. But, I’m currently at the place where I can’t imagine that hurting, the hurting I’m responsible for, being addressed without your help.

I keep thinking about a more active form of forgiveness, one that is more immediate, personal, and natural. My imagination though runs to climate change. Before us, within our experience, there is plenty of evidence of our (we humans) impact upon Earth. Alongside that impact, I want to place the impact we have upon one another. Just as the climate is changing in response to our actions, so is the world of social relations being shaped by our impact upon one another.

I know I can’t help impacting you. I know you can’t help impacting me. But, I don’t live in a world where that is just a random coincidence anymore. I live in a world where I am awash in connection. I know there is little that is actually random about it. Yet, I still live like my social impacts are merely farts in the wind. That no longer seems right.

I need your help to live otherwise. Let’s talk about it. Let’s interact like our contact, our incidental impacts upon each other, are really gifts, gifts that indicate how truly connected we are. I want to celebrate the new awareness that is coming to me later here in life, and I can’t do it without playmates, without others who will share with me the difficult process of dealing anew with my (our) blind ignorance.

I don’t like to know that I am (despite my best efforts) overbearing, controlling, and think too much of myself. I don’t react well to finding out either. But, I can do better. I imagine that if I wasn’t feeling so alone, and so prone, in my isolation, to all kinds of bad feelings, that maybe I could handle knowing more about myself. I also imagine that if I knew I was deeply connected and wanted here, then I could celebrate the little things, the places where we intersect (despite, and even sometimes because of my intransigence).

Connecting asks this of me. I don’t think, despite all my self-reliant alarms, that I can pull this off alone. This is one of those places where I can’t help saying (thank God my disability has forced me into this ability), I need your help.

Please help me! I (words that are taboo in our social reality) need your hand. And, I have reason to suspect, you need mine. Let’s make the most out of our impacts upon each other!