We often find ourselves divided – wife, husband, partner, sibling, child, parent, friend. Things happen. We both experience them.
You see them your way – colored by experiences in your past, or by resentment, or impatience.
I see them my way – colored by fear and pride – by the fact that I am myself and I am not you.
So, our memories of what happened were different from the start. And then, before we knew it, memories hardened into myths and myths into dogma. We stared across the chasm, but we didn’t see each other.
Eventually we say to ourselves: “I’m tired of being alone on my side of the chasm. I’m using up so much energy fearing and resenting you.”
Sometimes I wish each of us could crack the dogma that we created, peel away the mythology, shed our own recollections and trade memories. What would it be like if we could see each other’s pictures of the history we share? If we could see each other?
What we truly need here, you and I, is a little humility and a lot of “housecleaning”.
We need humility to say: “Only God sees history whole and knows the whole truth. All I have is my perception. It’s valid, it’s precious; but it’s fragmentary. Maybe I ought to try seeing as God sees from all the angles.”
We need housecleaning: Memory is selective; and we’re carrying around years of slanted, narrow memories. We can’t see past them. What we need to do is let some of these distorted recollections go. Trade a few. Listen.
Maybe, if I ask you how things look to you, between us, we’ll see something we never noticed before.
