You and I Are Too Old To Keep Apologizing for Being Human

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Tijs van Leur on Unsplash

We’re all doing our best. Sometimes our best sucks.

This has been a week for going inward. I’m going to share why with a piece by

Jan M. Flynn

, whose emotionally difficult-to-read writing on this topic reminds me of why sometimes I am loathe to engage for fear of offending someone.

Or making someone uncomfortable. In other words, being my natural out- loud and out-there self.

How much of me do I have to give up to be loved by you?

Jan’s story was about hurting someone she loved. Who hasn’t, right? Isn’t that part of the price we all pay for being in relationship? Some of us, of course, do more damage than others.

Some do damage because they themselves are damaged and need a place to cascade that shit. Some of us are just clumsy, or we lurch into something, or we step into a pothole we most assuredly couldn’t anticipate.

That’s just being human, flawed, and perfectly imperfect. Age and whatever wisdom we may gain from it don’t protect us from hurting others. No matter how much we try, invariably someone is going to take offense at something we say or do, well, just because.

It’s their day to be offended, maybe. Doesn’t make them a snowflake, and it also doesn’t make them crybabies. We have no clue what’s in anyone’s bucket.

Happens to us too. We hear or read something not meant for us at all and our panties get in a twist. We’re human.

Here’s Jan’s heartfelt piece:

I Wish I Was Too Old For . . .

Most of us, like Jan, want very much, especially as we reach so-called Wise Woman/Man stature (I’m still waiting, thank you) to believe we’re not going to do that any more. That, meaning something stupid, selfish, hurtful, unkind, pick a word.

OF COURSE WE WILL.

We’re human, we are flat-out made to fail. What we do get to do as we lurch along trying to be wiser is to feel differently about those life lessons. Less cat o’ nine tails self-flagellation and more hmmmmm….well, what did that teach me?

We wound, we are wounded. How we handle it on either end speaks to a great many aspects of our humanity.

The wisdom isn’t necessarily in never doing it again. Perhaps it’s more about being kinder to ourselves for the misstep, understanding and loving our fallibility, and more so, loving that part of us that feels such deep remorse.

If it didn’t bother us so much that someone got injured by our hand, then shame on us.

That said, at what point do we nod, accept the insight and move on? We can own it, learn from it.

What if the wounder isn’t remorseful at all?

In 2019, I wrote a story about someone whom I considered my closest and dearest friend for some twenty years. I’d spent untold time, treasure and investment in that person and their family, was welcomed to their house during a big holiday every year, and was incredibly grateful for that welcome.

This was a person who thought of themselves as very spiritual, very wise. I worshiped at their feet. Way too much so, it turns out. So when this person began to make deeply hurtful, cutting remarks, caustic comments which laid my soul bare, I figured it was my fault.

Must be. After all this person was perfect, right? Wise person, so if there was a problem, had to be my fault. That’s my default.

That’s childhood training, adult kid of alcoholic parents. Comes with the territory. Life goes sideways, blame the kid. Bet lots of you can relate.

Such training can send tender souls into the world forever in search of the “good mommy/daddy,” forever worshiping parental figures in ways they don’t deserve to be worshiped. My hand is way up here.

So I put this person on a pedestal, which was unfair to us both. Along the way, they began to carve holes in my heart. I endured more than my fair share.

You and I are WAY Too Old to subjugate ourselves to others. We are just as sacred, and our paths are just as valid.

I let this continue until there were too many nasty darts, the poison too pointed, and the intention to do damage too obvious. At that point, knowing that person well enough to know that if I brought those instances up that I’d be gaslit, I wrote about it.

Here’s the thing:

I changed all the information, names, dates, all of it. Did my level best to protect that person’s identity. My intention to express my pain was my attempt to work out the problem, not calling someone out to do harm.

Had I wanted to inflict harm, I’d have called that person out BY NAME.

That person saw the piece, recognized themselves and came after me with the kind of hellhound fury that an only outed bully can muster, accusing me of never loving their family or them EVER.

Wow. Really now. Twenty years of loyalty, time, gifts, even delivering a deeply loving and difficult speech at the funeral of a beloved family member. Sure. I hated all of them all right.

We learn much of we need to know about someone when we call out their bad behavior. Rather than notice that I went to considerable lengths to protect their identity, all that mattered, apparently, was that their poor behavior got outed.

They had a chance to observe the impact of their actions. Instead, how DARE I share the shitstains on their immaculate tightey-whiteys?

Unlike what Jan wrote about how horrible she felt, this person dug in to do even more damage.

When I stood my ground and pointed out that their reaction was precisely why I didn’t feel safe speaking to them directly, there was some hemming and hawing, and well….next spring when the flowers come back up we can talk about real friendship.

Implicit in this statement: I did nothing wrong, YOU are going to get a lesson on what REAL friendship is.

That opportunity was buried the moment they came after me with claws after having already clawed at my heart repeatedly. I don’t know what’s up on their end, only that I wasn’t willing to return to those rules of engagement.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

The wisdom isn’t necessarily in never doing it again. Perhaps it’s more about being kinder to ourselves for the misstep, understanding and loving our fallibility. More so, loving that part of us that feels such deep remorse.

Remorse is born of empathy.

I spent a lot of time wondering how much the closure of that connection was my fault. Here’s what’s true: I am 100% responsible for my part in what happened, as are we all.

I never ever in all those years ever said anything unkind to them.

Above all, there is no way in hell I would have launched such passive-aggressive attacks on someone I so dearly loved.

That person is 100% responsible for doing the damage, and apparently being more invested in their ego than in the grace of being sorry for causing harm.

No matter how clumsy it might have been, setting a boundary was very difficult for me. It was an evolutionary step in my own growth.

I don’t know what their story is, I don’t know what caused them to get so caustic, but I wasn’t the author of it.

The greater truth is that this person’s ire wasn’t at me. It was at themselves. As is true of us all. My choice was to step out of the firing line.

This is why Jan’s story rang so true for me. The genuine pain she felt in having created a wound, the disappointment that she and any of us feels when we are the author of someone else’s pain.

That’s the fundamental difference.

These pivotal moments in our connections, especially in our friendships and families, serve as touchpoints.

Yes I was clumsy. So is learning to walk. Yes I did a lousy job of it. That’s learning how to set critical guard rails around our hearts.

Yes I could have done better. Still…

This is what it looks like when it’s working.

Sometimes people are not worthy of our trust and the high regard in which we hold them. Therein lies the opportunity to hold our own hearts in higher regard, so that we don’t trade off our sacred selves for what others offer us.

That difficult relationship and its ending were gifts. I miss the positive aspects of that connection. I don’t miss the sideswipes that came out of nowhere. Had I felt that this person felt remorse and would commit to doing better, I’d have reached out.

For each one of us moving forward, trying to find some kind of grace and space to be our full and flawed selves, to cause hurt when we most assuredly don’t mean to, and to learn from the paw prints we leave on someone’s perfectly-pressed pants, this is life.

I’m not one bit sorry I did what I did. I am sorry for how it went down.

Sometimes the cost of growth is that someone in our lives leaves us, or we leave them.

We get to measure that against the constant cost of keeping ourselves small so that others can feel large.

The lack of an apology was enough for me to gauge whether or not there’s a future. Sometimes there is. Sometimes you and that person have walked together as long as you were supposed to, and you move on. I’m grateful for the time, the lessons, and the growth.

Life is all about seasons. Friendships, too.

It’s all good.

Let’s play.

Photo by Fabian Centeno on Unsplash

Thank you for spending part of your precious day with me. I hope this acknowledgment of the inevitable pain of friends and family was useful. If so please consider

If you know someone who is very hurt or who has hurt someone and this might help, please also consider

Either way, it’s all good. It’s all good.