Forgiveness, Part 1

 As a step in healing from the trauma of divorce and the years leading up to it, I have spent an inordinate amount of time working on my own character development, clinging to strengths like they were life rafts and becoming more curious about my weaknesses (real, perceived or otherwise) while figuring out what is worth devoting more time to (most of it) and what is not. And of course, I have been learning to forgive myself for all sorts of things in an effort to more fully forgive the acts of others as well. It's been quite a journey. 

One of my character flaws that pops up on repeat is a total lack of time perception, namely, how long it will take me to finish something so that I can move on to the next thing. This creates all sorts of unfavorable moments from being chronically late to certain standing appointments to telling friends I will "call them right back" only to never be heard from again (at least not in that hour...or day). One of the places this creeps out most frequently is when I am traveling to tournament weekends and I plan to leave at a certain time. No one, not even myself, believes I will get out of the house anywhere close to the designated time. Something about traveling (or simply leaving the house) makes my ADHD brain want to use the time pressure to do ALL the things I have been putting off BEFORE I go. So I might find myself cleaning out kitchen drawers or the chicken coops or changing all the sheets in the house which leads to a whole lot of laundry or maybe selecting new paint for the next house project I have no intention of starting in the near future. I have found I am better off not setting a time frame on my departure as it takes the pressure off and I no longer feel compelled to finish all the things: I just go when I go, end of story. (I still arrive VERY late to the hotel sometimes but let's be honest, this is not a huge issue.)

The upside, however, is I often find myself driving on the turnpike during the glory of the golden hour, watching the dance of light drenching the land in front of me as the sun sets behind, illuminating my path as if I were destined to go the very direction I am headed. It is breathtaking. 

That is where I found myself mesmerized on Friday. My path lit up, my brain spinning with the stunning beauty of it all and I was left contemplating something that had happened that day. You see, I had a smudge on my sunglasses and from what I could tell, it was on my left lens. I took off the glasses and cleaned them up, but still the smudge remained. I tried again with no better result. Because I was driving at the time, I couldn't look closely at the glasses so instead, I put them on, closed my right eye and realized that my left (non-dominant) eye could see clearly, no smudges. I switched to keeping only my right eye open and found that, in fact, the right lens was the issue. My dominant eye was so convincing in its resolve that the issue was on the other side that I just bought it, hook, line and sinker. It wasn't until I shut that dominant eye off that I could see clearly what was really going on. 

With the sun's warm glow still hugging my soul, I realized that in so much of my life I have let the dominant voice around me tell me what the problem was when the reality may have been something very different. When we shut off those outside voices, quiet the noise and pay closer attention, sometimes the solutions look very different, because the problem was misplaced in the first place. Sometimes, there isn't even a real problem at all. 

At any rate, I am learning to forgive my younger self for making the decisions she did; afterall, they seemed right at the time and she had no idea she needed to quiet all that external and internal chatter. I am forgiving her, knowing she made the best decisions she could with the experience and knowledge she had.  And at the same time, the path in front seems to be full of golden hours as if this was simply how it was always supposed to be. And for that, I am truly grateful.