Make Amends and Live With Intention
I must have been 10 or 11 years old when I had my first sword fight. It actually wasn't with real swords. A kid from down the block and I grabbed some old rusty curtain rods from the garbage can and started brandishing them at each other.Soon the sounds of clicking and clanging filled the air of our Brooklyn neighborhood block. I think we were competing against each other to see who would be Zorro and who would have to settle to be a Zorro sidekick.In the midst of our heated duel, I managed to pop my opponent in the eye with the end of my curtain rod (now, now...let's be mature about this, folks!). He quickly dropped his lance and grabbed his eye, yelling out in agony. I guess I was the better swordsman, and, hence, won the right to be Zorro.We stopped playing at that moment. For days afterward, my neighborhood chum would sport a black eye-patch over his wounded socket. I felt really bad, and when I told my mom, she accompanied me to my injured friend's home where I made a formal apology to him and his mom.Unfortunately, he really never forgave me, and actually took advantage of the incident. From that point on, every time we played, he would remind me of how rough I had been and that it wouldn't be right for me to win any more games or contests between the two of us. I succumbed to guilt and, afterwards, I always took a bow to his lead.Although I felt used, I do remember feeling relief for apologizing. I felt I was able to move onward, whereas until the moment that I decided to step forward and say, "I'm sorry," I felt guilt and stagnation in my life.To be able to recognize when you've wronged someone shows maturity. To take action to make amends shows growth. Perhaps I shouldn't have been as passive and unassertive after I apologized, because that form of making amends actually hinders growth. I didn't need to "lay down" like a submissive dog every time he wanted to win a game. But heck, I was a kid and I thought that I was doing the right thing.Here are some suggestions to start making amends in order to live with intention:1. Recognize that you've made a wrong. You must be aware of the action you've performed that wronged someone else. Sometimes this will mean that someone other than yourself will inform you of your behavior or mistake. Listen and ask yourself if you can see that person's point of view.2. Accept that you're not perfect. Everybody makes mistakes, and sometimes others get hurt during the course of your mistake. You're not perfect. No one is. It's OK to make mistakes. Sometimes they can be reframed as, per Bob Ross, "happy little accidents." Accepting the fact that you are prone to err at times makes it OK to forgive yourself and move on.3. Decide what you want to do to find relief. It's usually the moral thing to do to find a solution that will make up for your wrongdoing. Think about how you might want to be "righted" if you were in the shoes of the person you've wronged. Be fair, though. Don't come up with some poor excuse in order to avoid a just action that you should undertake. Don't tell yourself, "Well, if I were in his shoes, I would just let by-gones be by-gones." You have feelings, and when you perceive that those feelings have been violated in some way, you would want just compensation for it.4. Take action. Perhaps the hardest thing for anyone to do, for any reason or issue, is to take action. Why? I suspect because it's not the most important thing for them to do. For example, when you hear a person say that he needs to lose weight, but never takes any action towards losing weight, it's because it's not really important to them. Whatever a person is doing at the moment is the most important thing for him at that moment. If you're sitting at your computer reading this, then this is the most important thing for you to do at the moment. In order to take action (to make amends), you have to believe that it is the most important thing for you to be doing at the moment. Taking action is a huge step because it hurls you from just being a passive thinker to being a person with intention, meaning, and have the ability to get things done in your life. And the more you do, the more action that you take to bring your thoughts into fruition, the easier it becomes to do more. The more you will grow. If appropriate, actually tell the person you've wronged that you're sorry.5. Learn from your experience. It's almost always a good idea to evaluate your experiences, especially when it comes to making amends with someone. I don't mean to suggest that you dwell on what you did wrong. What I mean is that there is always something that you can learn from an experience. Use this to adjust your future behaviors and interpersonal interactions. Learn to see the mistakes that you've made in order to not repeat them again. Learn to see what strengths you've gained, and what weaknesses you ought to lose. Become a better manager of your life through self-reflection and introspection. And learn to move on.Feel free to chime in with your thoughts and suggestions.-RY
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