Perspective

I love when live gives you a lesson in a quick and (almost) easy step ...

I used to be much more of a worrier than I am now. I would regret something that I had said or did and play it over and over and over and over in my mind. Wishing I could take back a moment and undo something I was accountable for. I lived my life, looking back. I held onto so many things that were out of my control. It was done or said or lived ... and there was no undoing them.

I have no idea when or how the evolution of 'letting myself off the hook' came about. Part of it may have been in admitting or confessing something I had done. By writing or saying it out loud to another human being (and best of all, if you could admit something to the person directly affected) released that negative energy in my brain. It is said that ''confession is good for the soul." I believe that. Maybe you can't undo what has done but you can start to heal a wound and learn.

Maturity is a big thing as well. Living more years lets a person put things into perspective. "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" was a book that I read and learned to live. I input a lot of words and information into my brain that started teaching me to believe that I could forgive myself for things that I had wished I had done differently. A mantra started cycling through my mind "Let it go ... it doesn't really matter in the whole scheme of things ... let it go ... it's OKAY." I made myself accountable for the stuff that did matter. In fact, I had something I had written about someone when I was 9 years old come back to haunt me this past while. I have confessed this sin of mine to many people and it has lightened the load. I know it will continue to be unfinished business until I apologize to the person I had hurt. 38+ years later, I can remember what I did to hurt another human being. The things that continue to rise to the top of one's consciousness are the unfinished business.

There was a time if I made a mistake in taping a television show that I had intended to tape, that I would berate myself and make a huge issue over it in my mind. I continue to mess up taping things that I intend on taping ... but each time I do it now it may be momentarily disappointing, but my immediate self-talk is, "Oh well ... it's no biggie."

Well ... last night I was relooking at The Book. In it's unbound form, lots of pages had ended up flipped on the wrong side. Each time I stumbled across something that didn't make sense, I had this pit in my stomach and this "Oh no!!" sensation course through my entire being. Knowing that the book is in its final journey and possibly in the mail to me at this very moment makes any mistake feeling completely unfixable. I continued through the book and came across the 'flipped page' syndrome enough times that my heart didn't drop every time I thought I'd made an error.

Then ... it happened. I found the error of all errors. In documenting our family's 'legacy', I wrote each family member's birth date, the day they got married (and to whom), and their kids, more marriages and the grandchildren. I spent days double checking the facts on this chapter. I called and emailed and looked up information to verify what I had was correct. In one case, I highlighted an entire family and (thought I had) copied it and pasted the exact information on an email to that family member to confirm what I had was correct. Up to that point, I had been averaging about 3 errors on each family. So I was delighted when I was told I had that family 100% correct. I didn't go back and recheck anything.

When I was in the final revisions of the entire book before I sent it off to be printed, I didn't even look at this 'Family Legacy' chapter. I had spent about 3 days going over and over and over it. I didn't even give it a second glance - I knew I had it as correct as I could make it.

Last night, as I paged through this chapter I came upon an entire family that had been deleted from this section. An entire family!! It was the family that I hadn't made any errors on. The family that I had (thought I had) copied and pasted to an email. What I discovered, is that I had cut and pasted that entire section from the book. I had unknowingly deleted this entire family. And since I hadn't made any errors on that particular family I didn't even give it a second glance.

I emailed the publishing company with an 'addendum' at 12:20 this morning ... or with a correction of that page, if it is possible to fix it at this point. They won't be in the office until tomorrow. So there is nothing ... absolutely nothing ... that I could do about it right at that moment.

At one point in my life, I wouldn't have been able to sleep over this. I would have raked myself over the coals, I would have replayed the error in my mind over and over and over. I would have been riddled with regret.

But there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. So .... I slept. And I slept well. I did wake up with this dilemma being first and foremost in my mind. But I slept. And my heart wasn't palpitating with guilt and regret. There was nothing I could do.

Then ... this morning, I watched an episode on Oprah where the guests on her show had physically lost members of their family in the flash of a second.

A grandmother backed up and ran over a grandchild. He died. She was doing nothing that we all haven't done a million times. But she lost a grandchild.

A mother fell asleep at the wheel of a car and 3 out of 6 of her children died. A momentary lapse of judgement and she paid a very steep price.

Another family lost a child due to a drunk driver's decision to drive.

In a fraction of a second, these family's lives were changed forever. Doing things that everyone does every day. Backing out of a parking place without physically getting out of the car to check to see that the coast was clear; driving when you are tired; driving home from a wedding. In a second, they lost loved ones. An irrecoverable loss.

I finished watching that show and realized how very, very fortunate I am. Yes ... I deleted a family. But it is fixable. It isn't a permanent loss. It is such a very minor blip in the whole scheme of things.

There was a day that I wouldn't have been able to feel so accepting of myself for making an error like that.

I am human. I make errors. I am fortunate that I got off easy. This is something that can be fixed. There are many things that can't be healed so easily.

It's all about perspective sometimes...