Reflection #26 Taking Inventory
The Gap Year: Reflection #26 Taking Inventory
Patricia D. Brown
“It is true that we cannot be free from sin, but at least let our sins not always be the same.” –Teresa of Avila
I’m taking inventory. I aim to understand, interpret, and evaluate what I’m uncovering about myself. Bit by bit I’m finding answers and taking responsibility for my contributions to the misunderstandings and hurt of years past. Looking back, I ask myself, “How did my expectations, needs, and unresolved inner emotions lead to my getting hurt?” “What roadblocks did I set up that kept me enmeshed in past stories of my own making?”
To do this inventory helpfully, I’m attempting to free myself from viewing my past as a linear timeline. Instead, I am taking on a new view of time as stretchable. A linear mindset believes an event only happens once; the outcome is irreversible. There is no way to redeem or repair it. With a stretchable view, I can reach back into the past and repair events and relationships that I perceive as disappointments, betrayals, or failures. In this way, I am reframing and reshaping and looking at life with all its messiness and fragility... and learning to forgive.
Moving forward to forgive myself, I am also learning to forgive others. Holding a grudge, or keeping a resentment, is a heavy weight to carry around. The “Our Father” prayer I learned as a child states it this way, “Forgive us our trespasses (sins) as we forgive those who trespass (sin) against us.” Can I practice forgiveness for all whom I hold responsible for past hurts that I remember? Can I ask, at least in the quiet of my mind, to forgive those who have harmed me? And, can I forgive all the ways I’ve harmed myself by missteps, judgment, and nonacceptance? The biggest question is, “Am I resisting forgiving so I can move on?” I want to move on.
I am moving on!
I have moved on!!
Whether we are on the first or tenth draft of our lives, the object is to keep moving forward—with all its fragility and messiness, beauty, and hope. Reaching back with warmth and reassurance, we can hold our younger unhealed selves. Our older present-day self asks with great compassion, “What has it all meant?” Our longer perspective of time— a stretchable mindset-- gives us an objectivity and calm curiosity that was unavailable when we were younger and amid the struggles. With this, we discover a new purpose for our lives and clarify our beliefs about the ultimate values that call for moral and ethical honesty and a willingness to acknowledge our shortcomings. Because I’ve matured through adversity, I am open, no longer stuck, and can provide empathetic understanding to people who are riddled with resentment from the past to also reframe their so-called failures into acceptance… just as I am working to do.
Now it’s your turn.
Take time to reflect and if in a group, share as you feel able.
Taking inventory, I question what shift I can make to:
a) take responsibility for my contributions to the misunderstandings and hurts of years past.
b) free myself from viewing my past as a linear timeline and instead take on a new view of time as stretchable.
c) move forward to forgive myself and learn to forgive others.
d) provide empathetic understanding to others who hold resentments and help them reframe failures into acceptance.