One morning at breakfast, Dear Husband read to me a quote from Charles Schulz:
“Sometimes I lay awake at night and ask, ‘What have I done wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’”
I cannot say that I have contemplated the same thought, but I have come close. When one owns and loves a beagle, that type of thinking becomes routine.
The premise, however, is so simple and, yet, so sublime. We all have made mistakes, and, in doing so, we rarely realize the extent of the mopping up of emotional floors, and the mending of mental fences that must occur — before we are free of the error or the error is free of us.
The pathways to freedom from the nagging conscience (if, of course, you have a conscience!) are the true tests of character.
Those true tests of character do not come from whether or not you make a mistake. Making a mistake is part of living and learning. Such challenges and trials are given to us to build character. It is not the making of the mistake, but how we set about to correct it, that shows to others, and to ourselves, what we are made of.
Do you admit the error of your ways? Do you take responsibility for its consequences, unintended as well as intended? Do you try to make amends, perhaps even knowing that amends might be too late?
Or do you blame someone else, or something)? Do you proffer the requisite apology and practiced tear, expecting mere words to do the job?
Do you deny you even made a mistake? Use of the passive voice, e.g., “Mistakes were made” composes the theme song of the coward. The next line of the yellow-bellied loser is: “I did nothing wrong.”
There is also the “luxuriate in guilt” approach. Soaking in a hot-tub of guilt is hardly a luxury. The pity-party of playing the victim robs the soul of sustenance until, one day, or night, the party’s over. The soul of the emotion fraud has pretty much been shot to smithereens by its own owner.
No one pities the self-made victim anymore. Her, or his, ploys at conjuring up empathy, don’t work like they used to. The well-rehearsed throb in the voice, and the phony crocodile tears, come off as rather trite and annoying in a world where there are real victims who bravely face their fears, and lick their wounds, and do their best to heal them.
Anyone dealing with the con artist of victimology learns patience the hard way!
During the past decade or so, we patriots, in America, have experienced a bumper crop of Political Great Pumpkins that never showed up. In the personal realm, true friends got harder and harder to find for the individuals who place a premium upon true friendship, one based upon honesty, sincerity, loyalty, trust, and integrity.
Patience is a crucial element in building a strong character, both in life and in fiction. Gustave Flaubert stated, in part, that talent is a long patience. The inverse is also true: long patience is a talent. And patience comes in small doses, not all at once!
When I was younger, I aspired to be a writer of great import, and perhaps even fame. A charming guy from Long Island, a university-pallie, asked me:
“What do you want? Fame and Johnny Carson all in one night?” His Long-Giland accent made the question all the more imploring.
I did not watch Johnny Carson, and so I cannot claim to have aspired to sit beside him on the couch on the telly. Since Johnny is departed from real life, that part of the speculation is outdated, as well as irrelevant. And I did not seek fame, although recognition of my talents was a burning desire, perhaps too burning a desire.
That ardent desire was rather easily detected by Avaricious Persons in Positions of Superior Power to me,; and in situations of far greater advantage to Them. Unbeknownst to me, at that time (how clearly it looks now!!) — I would tacitly admit how much I needed to be acknowledged for my technical and intellectual abilities. And I very unwittingly displayed impatience for that professional recognition.
That ambition of mine — a true and noble hunger — got used against me, frequently. Those raw experiences were all that I needed to learn that patience is a long talent, a very long talent. I’d have to master that talent called patience if I was going to master anything that mattered in life, anything that mattered in my life, as an artist, and as a person.
I also learned that professional recognition of my talents didn’t come in the form of a direct affirmative statement. That honesty was a bridge way too far for the elevated-users whom I encountered, and there were many of them, inhabiting the domains of the ivory-tower, music, art, and journalism. Encouraging affirmation almost habitually came to me in the form of the back-handed compliment: the under-handed use by “Professionals” of My Writing for their own.
This sneak-thief approach of lifting my penned thoughts from my researcher notes, and inserting them into their newspapers columns and official memoranda was a HUGE wake-up call to me that, at the age of nineteen, I did indeed possess talent, in many areas.
Those experiences taught me well the trade-offs that were too often involved between a young underling, trying to make it on her own; and the older (much older) overlord. The suzerain was almost always a woman, and she almost instinctively spotted, within barely-adult me, the energy, the drive, the talent, the superlative skills in several areas, and a marked need to achieve lofty goals She then siphoned off just enough of each element, from me, so that she jumpstarted her flagging career and sapping “power” within the professional arena.
Once I woke up to the covert and creepy encroachment in such a situation, I left it, sometimes quietly, sometimes not-so-quietly. I recently discussed this phase of my life with a dear friend. She stated that I must have realized even then, at quite a young age, that I possessed a great talent for writing.
I’d like to think that such a confident understanding of myself was the case; but it wasn’t.
My writing was good, but not great. My observations, opinons, and insights were far better, perhaps even approaching greatness. And it was those little bits of brilliance that Boss Lady and Boss Man were in such dire need of, that they felt perfectly entitled to steal them, and, undoubtedly, to pick the brains of whoever else was willing to pay for “the experience.”
I was willing to pay for my own experience, but I was most unwilling to underwrite the experience of someone else, especially with my own abilities, and particularly when the balance of power was so heavily tilted in the favor of the Well-Paid (often Overpaid) Employer. I always left an unfair set-up on principle, and not always to protect my nascent talent, although that nascent talent was also duly protected, even if my pantry went without provisions!
It is amusing for me to now look back upon the well-paid, socially prominent people who became highly miffed whenever I sniffed a rip-off underway. As if I, the owner of intellectual property they planned to burgle, had no say in the matter!
In short, I instinctively protected my artistic self at the expense of my personal self. Eating boxes of Rice-A-Roni and macaroni & cheese (the kind with the powder, not the ooey-gooey plasticky cheese) for dinner were symbols of my principled stands. Those decisions meant that I spent many years working with my hands, toiling at jobs that I enjoyed, the menial labour that my peers sneered at: waitressing, cashiering, food service, secretarial and receptionist jobs, typist posts — until I felt ready to gird my artist loins for another go at the Budding Writer Wheel-of-Professional Ripoffs.
Eventually, I opted to write and edit technical documents and manuals for the federal government, where every author becomes anonymous. “It” is the most commonly used pronoun, accompanied by the passive voice: It was decided. It was agreed. It was determined.
Yes, “It” was busy all the time. I got to know “It” quite well!
Several years before I worked as a technical writer in Sacramento, California, I eked out a living in Washington, D.C., while also attending the George Washington University. I was known among my peers there to have walked out of countless jobs. One derisive beau (soon to receive his own pink slip) interrupted my attempt to answer the rather nosy question of the socialite/hostess at her posh Potomac dinner party:
“What it is exactly that you DO?” (for a living, was my take on the rude query)
“She collects W-2s.”
Laughter ensued from all of the Swells.
For those readers outside of the U.S., or even for those citizens and non-citizens who’ve not yet met the Taxman, The W-2 is the U.S. Government tax form for individual earnings.
Just as Charles Schultz learned, I too learned that moving forward with my life, and with my talents, is a journey of mistakes, and of infinite patience in correcting those mistakes!
Patience is not an easy virtue to put into practice. It may be an inherent quality, as well as a learned behavior. I am, by nature, both passionate and patient, so therein moves a lot of electromotive force!
I am patient, extremely patient, patient beyond belief, in many areas of my life. In other areas, however, I keep a watch with Swiss timing, and I check it often. Perhaps my overly abundant patience in some areas does not permit me the best effort in other areas. Life can be an intense balancing act. Getting the balance right is part of why Charles Schultz asked where he’d gone wrong.
That voice was simply saying that grand things can be made from grand mistakes. There is a reason for the eraser at the end of the pencil. Although I have noticed that the proportion of the eraser to the amount of graphite is not realistic! A separate eraser is often needed! Just recently, I caught sight of the properly sized eraser in a store. Measuring approximately 6 inches by 2 inches, the eraser announced:
“FOR REALLY BIG MISTAKES”.
But you can’t always completely erase or eradicate the mistake. Those pesky smudges and smears, some of them from the pencil mark, some from the eraser itself, and some from the fused gunk of the graphite and the eraser (a product of heat and pressure): They refuse to leave the page.
There’s even an odd-odd-sounding word, with an equally odd spelling, for this ghastly condition of error residue when we want to “re-purpose” the entire page: palimpsest.
In the olden days, a palimpsest was a page of manuscript, in scroll or book form, from which someone tried to remove the text and re-use the page. Getting a brand new blank page would have been preferable, but, the Ancients were short on paper supplies. We Moderns cannot completely remove all traces of bad writing from a text, but we can start with a new page, digital or paper.
The problem, currently, for We Moderns isn’t getting rid of the eraser-crud. The problem is getting rid of the moral crud that produces such execrable writing, on-screen, in books, even in letters!
To quote Mr. Schulz:
‘This is going to take more than one night.’”