What Goes Around Comes Around

          This last weekend my husband and I, along with other family members and close friends, attended our eldest sons engagement party.   A small intimate affair filled with love and laughter.   A day I think everyone who attended will always remember.   It was not only a day filled with memorys, that are preserved by photos, that will last a lifetime; but surprised me by becoming another opportunity to learn something about life.
          The event started as any other.  Introductions to people and future extended family.  Good food, good drinks, good conversation.   After we settled in I found myself observeing my son and his fiance' at this gathering with love and awe.   They are both in their mid 20's and life, while they have been living it for some time, has now been redefined for them by some one else.  I watched my youngest son observe the event unfolding before him.  He appeared to have a look of joy and slight confusion over the day.  A thoughtfullness of things yet to come for him.   I watched all of my eldest's friends, some of whom are entering relationships, some of whom have been in them for some time.   All of them absorbing the warmth and love of the evening.  I felt a level of comfort with my future daughter in laws parents, and all of our friends our age, as we all watched and reminised, to ourselves, over that time in our lives that is now being repeated by our children.  I suddenly had an over whelming warm feeling that life goes on; and I was happy for it.  My life suddenly started coming full circle.
          I am not so old as to not remember when I was young, engaged to my husband and starting out what would be my life, for the rest of my life.   I still remember the breath taking feeling of love; not only for my husband but for myself.  Look at what I was doing with my life!  I was capable!  We got married, then had our first born.  Then our second son.  The bliss was almost incomprehensible.  We lived as a family.  We found love and support in a home and life that we created.  
          The creation of our life didn't come easy.  We worked hard for it.   No one told me that marriage and raising a family would be the most difficult job I would ever have.   If they tried, I surely did not listen.  This is deffinetely a wisdom that is earned through experience.  I was certainly not warned about the compromises that I would have to make.   When a woman chooses to be married, and especially to have children, she makes a choice to put certain things in her life on hold in order to move her children forward.   Never with regret; especially as they get older and you can see that the compromises were, and are, actually apreciated.  
          A family endures.   It is your safety net, your support, your love, your sounding board, your anguish, your sorrow, your life blood.   It is something that we create.   There it is.   The Pith of the Matter.   WE create it.   During this creative process, like any great artist, we will throw away things that are not working.  We try new colors, new tones, different perspectives.  It is the creative process.  It is what is suppose to happen.  The people we grew up with in our youth are not our creation.  They are someone elses.  Namely our parents, or Aunt's and Uncles.   Granted they are still important people in our lives.  We give them respect and politeness.  But family is defined as a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children.   It does not say that once you make a choice to start your own family you are still to include the siblings you grew up with in that family.   Huh; interesting....including those people in your life is a choice.  An earned respect.  They stop being family and become your equals, friends by choice. 
         Realizing all this suddenly made me, after 26 years of marriage learn something.   Family is an ever changeing, ever expanding process.  It changes as we do.  Sometimes we hold on to the people we were raised with.   I think when we can endure the relationships with those people it is because we all have common interests as mature individuals.  But sometimes we are unable to sustain these relationships.    Sustain is to support, hold, bear the weight, maintain and it cannot be done alone.   
          The longer my husband and I are married and the older we get we are asked the following question more often.  What makes a good marriage.  Well trust, or course, is number one.   Even if you make a huge mistake the other person needs to trust that you will learn from it and be better for it.   Second, the ability to adapt, to change, and understand change   Humans are suppose to change.  The person you dated will not be the person you marry.  The person you marry will not be the person who parents with you.  The parent of your young children will not be the person who parents with you when your children are adolescents.  Bottom line, things WILL change and your ability to adapt with those changes helps determine not only the success of your marriage, but your happiness in it.  This by no means means that you are giving up who you are, it means that being able to negotiate, compromise and communicate are imparative in a marriage.  And those three tools need constant tweaking.  Third, be comfortable with being apart sometimes.  My husband and I will jokingly tell people that one of the reasons we have endured and continue to endure is that he traveled for work.   We looked forward to being apart soemtimes, because that meant we were over joyed when we were back together.  (It also meant I didn't have to negotiate for tv time and being able to cook chicken livers.)  I took vacations alone.   Learning to be alone and enjoy your own company makes you better company for someone else.  
          After 26 years I add a fourth one to the list.   The ability to create.   Being in a relationship is all about createing.   We create something new and different daily; think about it.   From being able to carry on a conversation with a stranger at the grocery store to cooking a meal.  We recreate our selves constantly.  Putting on "different hats" for different occasions and settings.  Being able to stay interesting to the same person day after day for years takes some imagination.   Marriage does not sustain boredom, boredom is maintained by choice.   Creation is sustained.
           This was a revalation to me.   I have "fired" many people in my life, not only as friends, but also people  I considered, mistakingly, as family.   But their have been very many meaningful, sustaining relationships in my life.  The most priceless one is the one I share with my husband.   Yes we bicker, always have, it is intelectually stimulateing to us.   We argue, don't always like each other, sometimes have a day where we feel momentary hate for each other.   But I truley believe that this is part of the creative process.  Right now, at this moment in time, the life that we have created together, that we have sustained together as a family is what has made us most happy in life.   We have both changed careers, houses, pets, and friends.  But our life together has sustained.
          The Pith of the Matter?   While I was traveling the path to where I am now in life I had doubts of where that path would end.   I am still traveling it and the end is no where in sight.   You know that saying what goes around comes around?   Mostly we apply it to persons who have inflicted some hurt or injustice on us.   But it also apply's to living your life.   Have my husband and I had a perfect life together?  No.  Thank goodness for that.   The message that we send to everyone in our life, whether they have been fired, or are still sharing our life is this;  live your life with truth, adventure, and creativity.  The opportunity's to learn, love and laugh will be boundless.   Now at the end of being a parent and moving to the next phase of life with my husband things that were once hidden are now clear.  What goes around comes around. 
          

Saying Sorry is Redemption

          I heard something interesting today,"saying sorry is redemption."  This got me to thinking; I know a person, actually a few person's, that don't know how to apologize, or choose not to.   They feel, and I know this because they have said so, that they have nothing to be sorry for.  Huh, curious.   I've always felt some confustion over this.   Do people not apologize becasue they don't want to?  Do they not feel any reason for being sorry?  Are these feelings genuine, or pride, and stubborness?   Or denial?   I can think of one instance off hand, in my life, where some one did me a huge injustice.   What this person did changed the way I percieve life and people in it.   I use to have regret and anger for who I might have been; but when I matured I realized that I would not be who I am with out this injustice.  So when I heard,"saying sorry is redemption."  My feelings for this person suddenly changed to sorrow and regret.  Not for me, but for her.   She died not knowing redemption.
         So why would someone choose not to say sorry?   Yeah, we've all been in that arguement with a loved one, or friend, where we are absolutely sure we are right and they, of course, are wrong.   After being in a relationship for 28 years let me tell you, the scenario I just mentioned, where you are always right, rarely happens.  Sorry.  
         So when do we apologize?  Well apology is a written or spoken expression of one's regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, or wronged another.   Giving an apology is actually not about making you feel better but making the person who was hurt, insulted or wronged feel better.  
        If someone doesn't apologize does it mean that they are narcisitic and incapable of seeing beyond themselves?   I don't think so; in most cases.  I think it is more likely that people assume that apologizing has to do with being wrong.   Sometimes it does, but you can apologize with out being wrong.   I was taught that you can apologize for your behavior and not your feelings.   Our feelings are our own, we own them, we are responsible for them.   You can also apologize for the way you communicated.  You meant what you said, you are just sorry you said it that way.
          In a relationship I also believe that if you apologize you have to admit that you hurt someone who is very dear to you.  Being in a relationship of that depth absolutely means giving up a protion of yourself for someone you love more than yourself.  You are putting someone else's needs and feelings above your own.  A very unselfish act. 
          How can we admit that we mindlessy, in the heat of the moment, have said something to some one we care for, that we regret.   Then we have to admit that we were wrong in the way we communicated something.   Worse yet, we were imperfct and hurt someone we love dearly.   The family member in my life was not, by any means, close to being perfect; but she tried very hard to be perfect.   I think this is ultimately why she couldn't give me the apolgy I needed so much.   She tried hard her whole life to give me everything with in her power, money, a place to live, knowledge, wisdom; but I never heard any of it because she didn't apologize.   Sad for both of us I think.   I remember everything that she taught me, good and bad, regardless of that apology.  I remember mostly that she died takeing to the grave the horrible actions that changed my life. 
          I think feeling sorry for someone is misunderstood.   Sorry mean feeling regret, compunction, sympathy, pity, sorrowful, grief, tragic;  all those words that are attached to uncomfoartable feelings that we would like to ignore.   And many of us do.  But being able to feel all of these is what makes us human.   Its what moves us to action and change.  If we feel no regret over anything we do we have not learned.  Learning is all about making mistakes.  Everything in life is about making mistakes.   Sorry.  
         Do people choose not to apologize because they don't want redemption?   Redmeption is an act of redeeming or the state of being redeemed.   It is deliverance or rescue.  It can be connected to theology, but not necessarily.   To redeem is to buy or pay off; clear payment, to buy back, to recover.   So it could be about religion.   But since I am not religious this is how I percieve it.   You are saying to the person who feels wronged, hurt, or insulted that I am buying back my honor, my self confidence, my pride and in exchange giving you back your self confidence and turst in me.  None of this has to do with right or wrong.   It is all about love.  Love of yourself and your place in the world.   This is why so many people feel  loss from death not just becasue of the loss of a person, but the loss of the apology and the loss of love unrealized.
        The Pith of the Matter.   Yes, ultimately we are all in charge of our own perceptions of ourselves, our world and the people we choose to be in it.   We are the ones who decide how we will be loved by how we choose to love oursleves.   But what a loss when an apology goes unrealized.  Not only for the person who is on the recieving end, but more so for the person who needs the redmeption.   When we redeem ourselves with the gift of an apology we are saying we are capable of learning, we are capable of changing, and we are capable of growing and being better.  We are capable of love.   I want apology's in my life.  The people who give them are the people who I love.   Sorry.  

Attached is a great web site on seven rules for apologizing.  
http://alphamom.com/parenting/seven-rules-on-how-to-apologize/