Cosmic Well

As I mentioned in my post introducing Elul, this is a time of returning to the best self. This requires deep reflection, and the offering of apologies and repentance for wrongdoing. Some thoughts on recent apologies:

A while ago I made an apology I am not proud of. It felt too…something. Too much like I was trying to get it right, or if not trying for perfection then concern that it wouldn’t be enough. I believed the people I wronged were owed the apology, and I meant what I said. But in longer relationships, everyone gets hurt, and I find my self struggling to let go of the hurt I felt, the cracks I had seen in the relationship that no one else seemed ready to acknowledge. Those included my failings, particularly my gross inability to see past what I now recognize as engaging in the white supremacist brain rotted tendency to avoid conflict. I had avoided conflict and built resentment for far too long.

I’m not going into more detail here, because I don’t see the point on such a public forum. One of my perennial favorites, rachael anne jolie, has helped me understand not every detail of one’s life needs to be shared for free on the internet (she makes you pay for the juicy details).

I made an apology in the first week of Elul that I am proud of (is it right to be proud of an apology? A blog post for another day). I think it’s a lot easier to apologize to people we have true distance from, especially if they have not wronged us, or at least we do not think they have. I was shocked to receive an apology I never felt I needed back! I so clearly saw myself as in the wrong years ago when I was an outright bully to this person. I also can’t ignore that this person was white. Again, when writing that apology, I worried it wouldn’t be enough, would hurt more than nothing.

Have I mentioned I have anxiety?

One of the ways I’ll be facing down teshuvah in the coming year (on the Hebrew calendar) is by reading Layla F. Saad’s White Supremacy and Me. But I know it’s not enough to read that book. I’ll be pairing with, among others, Not Nice by Aziz Gazipura. As someone who experienced emotional abuse as child, I fawn. I people please. I sometimes see myself as inherently a problem for existing – not a useful or healthy place to do anti-racism work from. And I can feel in my heart that the poison of people-pleasing needs its own antidote, or my traumatized brain will twist work meant to reduce harm to others into something that only leads to more failed attempts at the impossible: trying to get everything right always, and especially to never do anything wrong in human relationships, and especially especially when those are with people of color.

Getting to a place where I have released people pleasing will be more than a return. If I manage it, it will be a rebirth, and likely one I will not really “reach.” Rather, I suspect it will be a process, with lots of repetitions and lessons learned again and again. A journey I will be on for the rest of my life.

These are a few of the threads in the tapestry of return for me this year. Apology for wrong-doing and active work toward not doing the harm again are part and parcel of the work of becoming the best self. Or rather, the ever-changing self.

I mentioned in my previous post that I was working with Aly Halpert’s rendition of Psalm 27. When I pressed play the first night of Elul, I was delighted to discover that I knew the words despite my Hebrew being very passive and not having heard the song for a year. I found myself gyrating, dancing, rolling my spine, and singing, singing loudly and confidently. Song is so sacred to me; I feel a real magic happen when I sing, whether it is recognized prayer or whatever song I’m playing on repeat at the moment.

I seek to change, to turn myself this season, like so much earth turned over, like a compost heap rotated, being cultivated into something nourishing. And I’m feeling so full, after the first week of Elul, of the lesson that sometimes I can surprise myself. I can get so caught up in my failures, in the deadly systems I was grown in, in the idea that there is something inherently bad or burdensome about me, that I forget…

I don’t know everything about myself.

It is impossible to know everything I will say or do.

Me now cannot stop me in the future from hurting others.

Me now cannot stop me in the future from repairing harm done.

I don’t know who I will become. I am responsible for taking actions that shape her, and that is an awesome responsibility, but she is a stranger. I can’t wait to get to know her. I hope she keeps surprising me.

I invite you into this same wonder and curiosity. How have you surprised yourself recently?