i don't often write about my past but a short quote from the dalai lama on my daily calendar and a book that i am reading, "letting go" by david hawkins, have caused me to feel the need to write this post. on my calendar, the dalai lama said something like "you cannot correct the mistakes of the past; you can only refrain from making the same mistakes in the present." but dr. hawkins' book is all about letting go of past mistakes by understanding their causes and letting go of the things that once led us down the wrong path and continue to cause us suffering in the present. there is truth in both understandings, and, as is often the cause, two seemingly contradictory ideas can both have merit. we cannot go back and undo past wrongs; at best, we can make amends, but often that is not possible. what we can do is learn from our mistakes and work to stop ourselves from making them again. i know from my own personal experience that the past continues to haunt me. much of my present suffering is caused by my inability to correct past hurts and misjudgments. as much as i wish to push them to the back of my mind and live in the present, they are there, and meditation seems to have a way of reminding me of them.
as i've meditated on the dalai lama's statement and on what i've learned so far from "letting go," i've been able to analyze much of what has caused me pain as i recall my past. i now see that every misdeed in my past that is causing present suffering is related to my need for acceptance. that need arises from my rejection by my father. my father was not a bad man, and i know he loved me deeply, but in so many ways i was a disappointment to him. i knew this from early on in my life. when he wanted his firstborn son to develop a love for sports, and especially for baseball--a sport he was very talented in--i loved reading and music. during the first few years of my life, he was absent much of the time as he drove two hours every day from our home to the business he managed. later when we moved to the town where his business was located, he worked long hours, coming home exhausted without the energy to play with me. i can still remember my mother telling him that he was neglecting me, that he needed to pay more attention to me.
as i pursued my own interests, i could see that he thought them inappropriate for a boy, and i suppose insisting on making my own way was a way of asserting my own personality, a sort of getting back at him for what seemed to a young boy as him ignoring me. when my younger brother came into the picture, he was very different from me. where i was quiet and obedient, he was rowdy and rebellious. after he developed and then recovered from a life-threatening infection when he was about five, my father showered affection on him. i can see now that this outpouring of love from a man who was normally withdrawn and undemonstrative stemmed from my father's relief at my brother's recovery, but his actions further pushed me away from my dad.
as i grew into adolescence, i longed from my father to love me as he loved my brother. i worked hard to have perfect grades, to play the piano as perfectly as i could, to get involved in sports, if not by playing them, by working as a statistician for our school basketball teams. i even tried out for the junior high basketball team, and the coach, a kind and sensitive man, saw how much it meant for me to be accepted by my friends who were good players, at least let me put on a suit and sit on the bench. i knew, though, that my talents were not sufficient and after a year of bench-warming, i gave up playing for keeping records for all the ball teams at our small school.
by the time i reached high school, my father began to take more interest in my pursuits and encouraged me in them. other adults in the community would tell me how my father bragged when i won some academic or musical honor, though he seldom told me himself that he was proud of me. just knowing that he was present at my performances and seeing the smile on his face when i played well made me aware that he had finally accepted the fact that i was my own person. i knew that, though i had not turned out as he would have wished, i was someone he could take pride in calling his son, and our relationship improved as i became a man, though i could never say that we were close in the way my younger brother and sister were close to him.
all through my life, i can see that i did things that caused harm to others in my desire to be accepted by authority figures in my life. i tried to ingratiate myself with my superiors, often at the expense of undercutting others, even my dearest friends. i can now see that my behavior stemmed from my desire to be loved and accepted by my father. i don't blame him for my own mistakes. as he became older and told me of his life growing up, i learned that his own father was absent most of the time, commuting to a distant business he owned and only coming home on weekends. i learned that his young life had been a competition with his older brother for their father's affections, that, while his brother was the obedient and ingratiating son, my father felt pushed aside by his own father. i could see that many of my dad's actions were patterned after those of his father, even while he resented and rebelled against him and his older brother. it's very true that the sins of the parents are often visited on their children. certain ways of being persist across generations until someone has the insight to break with them when they are harmful.
i hope that i have developed some of that insight. from the lives of my own children, i know that they feel loved and accepted by me and that have grown into loving adults who have great compassion for others. i was surprised recently when something i posted on facebook caused friends from my past to reach out and make comments that were surprising to me. one wrote that my smile had made him and others so happy in high school. another wrote that i was a "great guy." a friend who had been close at one time, but for some reason that i never understood had cut off ties with me abruptly and without explanation many years ago, wrote kind comments that indicated a desire to rekindle our friendship. suddenly i realized that i had magnified my mistakes in my own mind and that others had a very different picture of me than i had of myself. that doesn't excuse the hurts i caused, but it does make me realize that those hurts may not have been as great as i imagined them to be. my suffering has been out of proportion to the misdeeds i committed, and i am beginning to let go of that pain.
this has been a longer post than is normal for me. i've said some things that i need to say and the writing of them has been cathartic. may we each be able to let go of the suffering that the past causes us. may we forgive those whose actions have prompted our suffering, even though it is our perceptions, not their actions, that has caused us to suffer. may we try to understand ourselves and others, realizing that we all suffer together and have need for healing. may we extend compassion and love to ourselves as well as to others. shalom.
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