Life is full of frustrations and challenges. Many times we do things which are wrong. You have done this and I have too. Sometimes our actions are accidental, other times they are done in a deliberate manner. In both cases my friends, wrong is wrong.
If we are smart, we apologize and attempt to move on. Sometimes, because of pride, we fail to own up to our errors in life. Each of us has experienced this quandary more than we would ever care to admit. If we do not apologize, we run the risk or creating enemies.
At other times we end up wasting time and energy fighting frustration. Neither of these are productive undertakings. Early in my career I learned that nothing beats admitting you are wrong to keep your time in the doghouse to a minimum.
In a perfect world, we make our mistakes, apologize, and are forgiven. In a less than perfect world, apologies are not accepted and grudges are built up and accumulate. Such has been the case within the bounds of my world. I am certain that you are no different than me and have seen and experienced the same things.
Those of you who have been loyal readers of my commentaries over the past several years know that on more than one occasion I have erred in the delivery of my message. My words were written in haste and later provide to be wrong. Harm was caused. In these cases I did the natural thing, the right thing. I said that I was sorry and promised that I would work harder not to make the same type of personally-injurious mistake in the future.
You have probably heard, as have I, that those things that those things in life that do not kill us make us stronger people. I believe this to be the case. Those tough times that you and I have lived through should now be called what they really are: experience. Experience like this is valuable because of its impact on us and the cost of its acquisition.
Since this is a commentary about forgiveness, let me start by stating that one of the first steps to forgiving others involves confessing that each of is not all the person that they should be. It is important for me to state that as an individual I am far from perfect. Lengthy is the list of things for which I will at some point have to answer. Each of us must be honest enough to tell the world that we have completed our requisite course in being a dumb-ass.
One of my recent apologies involved an extremely bad error in judgment on my part. To be brutally blunt, I acted like an ass. I let my pride overrule my common sense. I issued a very public apology for my stupidity. Many of you contacted me to thank me for my candor and my honesty. I shall be grateful to for many years to come for your kind expressions of support.
Sadly, I recently found out that there were those out there who doubt my sincerity and who have refused to give me the benefit of the doubt on my pledge to become a better person. I received a communication from an individual who stated that he never wanted to have anything to do with me again, and wanted me to stay as far away from him and his organization as possible.
Given the straightforward nature of the man's message, there was nothing to do but say, OK, if that's the way you want it, so be it. My feelings were hurt. It would be one thing if I had not apologized. However, I saw the error of my ways made the appropriate apology in a most public venue.
A number of comments were received from members of that same organization thanking me for my candor. It is critical for each of us to understand that words once uttered can never be retrieved. However, through my apology I tried to rebuild the damaged bridge to that group. A person can only try, and I did just that. A person who tries sometimes fails. I take my failure in this case as a challenge to be better in the future.
Like many of you would do, I tried to put this matter out of my mind. I attempted to move on, saying to myself that you cannot please everyone, but it stuck in my mind that maybe I was being repaid for my inability to put a certain part of my own life behind me. Perhaps there was someone that I had not forgiven, and was now being repaid in kind because of my own pig-headed actions.
Many times during our lives here on earth we experience times when we feel wronged. Whether such feelings have a basis in fact or not usually doesn
