The Past Is Too Often a Chain; and a Circle Has No Sides

Good grief. We finally get home, and I check in at a few places I like to visit, and I see that at a couple, old wounds aren’t just being picked at or salted, they are being sliced deeper. Like pain much, you guys?

I understand that there are legitimate issues still to be resolved. But it appears that a good faith effort is being made to handle those issues in a constructive way. Why is that not enough? What value do you think can be gained by rehashing past problems that were old management’s doing, in the light of new management’s efforts to be accommodating of some of your wishes; or by subjecting each statement by new management to electron microscopy—and often reading your own interpretation into the words in the process?

Things that have been done cannot be undone. Investing your time and energy into the past is forging a chain that binds your progress. Isn’t life short enough without hindering yourself in this way? Do you not have goals to achieve, ideas to consider, plans to make and refine, individuals to play with and think with and help and nurture and love today?

What was becoming one of my favorite places to hang out is turning into an energy drain; and while I don’t anticipate flouncing off, I probably will not visit there as often once I fulfill some obligations. I don’t know enough about the other place and how it’s faring under its new management to say whether I will give it a try; I consider at least some of the long-timers there friends but I am no longer sure that regard is reciprocated, and I am reluctant to join someplace where I might not be welcome.

However, I do want to make clear that anyone who considers me to be on one side or other in the ongoing brouhaha is thoroughly misnaken. Paraphrasing Treebeard, I am on no one’s side because no one is on my side. That’s how it ought to be, though; each person’s own rational self-interest is properly the center of his or her life. It has taken me a long time to get here, but I can see value in just about everyone—truth be told, some of that value takes a more cautionary “how not to ...” form, however. If you aren’t willing to call someone a friend any longer, why not accept the learnings offered in the relationship and then move on? I see no shame in such a course.

And, as usual, when I start holding my life out as an example I know it’s way past time to back away from the keyboard, because I am far from perfect in this realm. Human relationships are messy at best, and I’m still trying to get a lot of things right myself. So I’ll wander off and continue with the unpacking, and basking in the afterglow of a spectacular summer of adventures.