Have you ever accused someone of doing something that you were absolutely convinced they were guilty of it, only to find out later that it was of your own doing all along? A few days ago, I was helping my partner to assemble a tall, metallic, border fence in his backyard when I did this very thing to him. While I could bore you with all the details of what led up to this, I decided it was more important to go right to the end of the story instead.
By the time we had finished with this project, it was starting to pour outside so we quickly cleaned everything up and moved it all into the garage. It was there that I discovered one of the stakes was missing from those that we knew were going to be leftover. For the next twenty minutes, I proceeded to accuse my partner of forgetting where he put it. As we searched in every nook and cranny of the garage and then got wet outside while we looked entirely there too, I grew more and more flustered. With each passing moment, I continued to poke and prod him for his apparent memory loss of where he had set it down. After hearing him defend himself so many times from my constant barrage of senile comments I was making towards his way, it hit me. It wasn’t missing at all. The truth was I had only just miscounted on how many were supposed to be remaining in the first place. And it was then, that I felt truly terrible. I promptly admitted my wrongdoing to him and apologized several times over. After he accepted it and went into the house, I sat down and took a few more moments to pray to my Higher Power about another of my character defects that I was suddenly much more aware of now. And like I do with any other character defects that still emerge from me every now and then, I asked God to do what’s necessary within me to remove it and prevent the situation from ever happening again. A few minutes later, I felt a whole lot better and was actually extremely grateful for having been able to admit so readily that I was wrong. Not too long ago, I probably wouldn’t have done so.
The moral of my article today is relatively short and sweet. Don’t always be so sure that someone else is to blame for something that’s happened in your life, even when your ego is screaming at you that this is definitely the case. Frequently what can occur in those moments, like it did for me, is that a person doesn’t take the time to slow down and breathe deeply before making an accusation. Because the truth is, that it’s in those moments one chooses to slow down, where they can often wake up and realize their accusation is going to be a false one, as the only one to blame all along was just themselves.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
