Sunday Reflections

This is a blog post I have actually thought about writing several times over the 5+ years that I have kept this blog. It's a post that I realize carries a lot of subtext, and so I need to assure you that it is not written for any of my current readers in particular. The person who should read it probably never will, and that may be for the best. I realize it's less entertaining and more personal than what I usually try to write, but there are just some thoughts I feel like I want to send out into the universe tonight.

Once, years and years ago, I broke a boy's heart. It was the first time I had ever done so, and at that point I had never had my own heart broken. I had been disappointed, but never heartbroken, so I don't think I fully understood what I was doing, and maybe that was for the best.

The "talk" was something that had to happen. I had happily gone on a number of dates, knowing perfectly well that it was never going to go anywhere past friendship, and I was naive not to realize that the boy saw things differently. But I didn't, and when it became apparent that we were on different pages, I had to end things. I felt awful. I felt like I should have done things differently much earlier. I felt sad for his sadness.

And then, the next day, I moved on.

Several weeks later I got a flood of strange emails from this boy who, to be honest, I had almost forgotten about (there was no reason for me to run into him during the course of my regular life). It was a little bit of a shock to me to realize that in that entire time, while I'd been immersed in classes and friends and roommates and running and all those other things I do in my life, he'd still been thinking about me, and feeling angry and hurt and sad and bitter. It was in that moment that I really experienced the pain of having created pain in someone else's life. Usually when I cause pain, it's unintentional, or occasionally in the heat of the moment, but I realized then that sometimes you cause pain intentionally and inevitably, and it hurts to cause this pain, and it hurts even more that you can't do a thing about it.

For a very long time, I would think about this boy periodically. I often wondered what happened to him. Where did he end up? Did he find love somewhere else? Or did my actions deepen a self-consciousness and cynicism that I know years of failed dating experiences can feed? Every time I thought of him, I felt sad for him.

And then one day, a few years ago, I suddenly thought, I think he's probably fine. I realized that I had been hurt and disappointed and, yes, by that time even heartbroken by the actions of other people, but overall, I was fine. I experienced the hurt for a time, sometimes a short time and sometimes a long time, and then I moved forward. I realized that it was selfish of me, and unkind to him, to continue to think of him as the person who had dejectedly walked away from my apartment years ago. I realized that I would not want people who had hurt me to remember me in the moment of my hurt, but rather that I would want them to see me for my later successes, for my friendships and strengths and for the ways I had learned and grown over the intervening months or years.

One of the hardest things about life, in my own mind, is the inevitability of causing pain to another person. In fact, you cannot care deeply about anyone if you don't open yourself up to the possibility of both giving and receiving, and if you allow yourself to care deeply, you will at some point be hurt by someone you love, and you will at some point hurt someone you love, and you will at some point feel deep sadness and pain not just for the hurt you receive, but for the hurt you cause. And yet, people are resilient. I admit that I sometimes question my own resiliency when the going gets really tough, but here I am, finding happiness in so many things, from my family to my friends, my dog, my apartment, my books, my piano-playing, my students, my work. All of these things come with frustrations and even disappointments, but that's the price of investment, and the rewards of investment, all combined, are worth more than the price.

Tonight I am feeling both sadness for hurt I have caused and peace about the hurt I have felt in the past. I hope that the small roles I have played in many people's lives balance out to good overall, just like the balance scale for all the people who have touched my own life leans heavily toward the good.