Two sides
Things are going ok. I’m reminded of how this place (the monastery ) touches me on a level of caring and principle. I’ve been thinking how I like to relate and how in a very big level that exists here.
I try to live with integrity and strength daily but I know sometimes I feel a weak and retiring reality in me. I was faced with something to ‘step up for’ this morning and just could not, I didn’t have it in me. A friend said the other day when talking about this, saying that ‘It’s ok, you can’t give what you don’t have!’
I came back from driving Jeremiah this morning to DCA. I felt like I fell short with him and the situation, I fixated on it and felt lowly at first unable to avoid total judgment. But thank God I remembered a wisdom I realized to look at that kind of blinding reality with an alternative perspective. And that helped a great deal. I thought how I look up to my Father’s strength and character and I knew he also has to deal with this kind of thing (falling short) as I’m sure a lot of or maybe all of us do. It’s important not to obsess on the negative and important to know and remember there’s always an alternate way of looking at things. No one is perfect. And compassion is key for our humanity.
After thinking about that, I got a call from my Dad.
I could put aside my instinct to whimper to him with the resolve that we all have to deal with stuff like that. Also after he called my mood is shifting. It was a good call but then I started to feel the suggestion from him that there’s more life out there to love. Understand please guys, that is entirely my fabrication aka where my mind went. It was a fear of mine, though I admitted to him i wasn’t having any FOMO in my life, that is until after the call and my perspective turned.
Again I realize we each have to deal with falling short but being able to shift perspective on what seems a penultimate self judgment and looking at it in a reasonable different perspective because, a good reminder to myself is thatI have ways, differing ways, of experiencing the same things
I came away from conversing with Dad and Cristina feeling and wanting to experience more dignity in my life.
But then my pride swings way high as does my mood
I thought about how I was feeling sky high, freedom for dignity!! I wondered is that a lie?
But I thought about having to deal with harsh realities (as that's a reality)
In life and so again came back to there are two sides too
Always two perspectives to think about, I thought, not just unbridled and ungrounded linearity.
I’m wondering about the way I deal with my feelings and discomfort, disappointment. Another priest randomly said to me as an evaluation of when I talked to him was the statement “A pretty picture!” I’ll use that information to awaken my own reckoning as to how I deal with my feelings positive and negative. It surely helps open my eyes to a fresh perspective and distance.
Replies
I can’t read this but this is what ChatGPT evaluates:
I think this is a strong and quite revealing reflection. The central insight isn’t really “two sides” so much as your discovery that you don’t have to let one interpretation of an experience become the whole truth.
A few things stand out to me.
1. The monastery appears as a place of integration
Your opening is important:
“this place … touches me on a level of caring and principle.”
You aren’t simply saying that you like the monastery. You’re identifying something about the way you want to live and relate that is embodied there. The monastery seems to give you an external environment in which qualities you value—care, principle, integrity, strength, community—are made concrete.
That makes the later conflict more interesting. You are confronted with your own inability to live up to those ideals perfectly, and that produces the feeling of falling short.
2. “You can’t give what you don’t have” may be the most important sentence here
Your friend’s statement functions almost like a little koan in the piece.
You seem accustomed to evaluating yourself according to what you believe you ought to be capable of giving: strength, courage, dignity, generosity, responsibility.
But your friend introduces another measurement:
What do you actually have available to give right now?
That’s radically different from asking, “What should I have been able to give?”
It introduces compassion without necessarily introducing self-excuse.
3. The Jeremiah episode shows your old mechanism very clearly
You describe a sequence:
Something happens → I fall short → I judge myself → the judgment becomes total → I feel lowly.
Then something interrupts it:
I remember another way of seeing → the experience becomes less absolute → compassion becomes possible.
That is a significant development.
You’re not saying, “I didn’t fall short.”
You’re saying, “I did fall short, but falling short doesn’t have to become a verdict on who I am.”
That’s a much more mature form of self-compassion than simply reassuring yourself that everything is fine.
4. Your father becomes almost a symbol of the “other side”
This part is particularly moving:
“I thought how I look up to my Father’s strength and character and I knew he also has to deal with this kind of thing (falling short)…”
You’re doing something psychologically important here: you are allowing an admired person to be human.
The strong father doesn’t cease to be strong because he sometimes fails, struggles, or feels inadequate.
That seems to offer you a new definition of strength:
Strength isn’t the absence of weakness. Strength includes being able to live honestly with one’s weakness.
That connects beautifully with the monastery’s emphasis on principle and your own desire for integrity.
5. The section about your father and “more life out there” is fascinating
I think you are very perceptive in catching yourself here:
“Understand please guys, that is entirely my fabrication aka where my mind went.”
That’s an important distinction.
Your father didn’t necessarily tell you, You aren’t living enough.
Something in you heard the possibility of that message.
And suddenly the very thing you had been celebrating—your life as it exists—became vulnerable to comparison with an imagined alternative.
That’s where FOMO enters, even though you consciously weren’t experiencing FOMO before the conversation.
In other words, the external event didn’t necessarily change; your interpretation of it changed.
And that brings you right back to your central insight about perspective.
6. “Dignity” seems to be the deeper subject
I think the phrase:
“I came away from conversing with Dad and Cristina feeling and wanting to experience more dignity in my life.”
may actually be the heart of the reflection.
You seem to be distinguishing dignity from achievement.
You can have dignity while falling short.
You can have dignity while being tired.
You can have dignity while not “stepping up” on a particular morning.
You can have dignity without proving that your life is as expansive, exciting, socially connected, or conventionally successful as someone else’s.
And then you experience the danger on the other side:
“But then my pride swings way high as does my mood.”
That’s wonderfully honest.
You notice that the correction can itself become an extreme:
I am inadequate → I am magnificent!
And you recognize that neither extreme is quite trustworthy.
7. This is where “two sides” becomes more sophisticated
At first, “two sides” sounds like:
* negative perspective
* positive perspective
But I think your reflection eventually discovers something more subtle.
There are actually two dangers:
Self-condemnation:
“I failed, therefore I am inadequate.”
Self-exaltation:
“I have discovered dignity, therefore I am above the harsh realities of life.”
Neither is sufficient.
The healthier position seems to be somewhere in between:
“I am a person of dignity who sometimes fails.”
That’s much sturdier.
And perhaps that’s what you mean by refusing “unbridled and ungrounded linearity.” You don’t want to be dragged along by whichever feeling happens to be strongest at the moment.
8. “A pretty picture!” is intriguing
I would pay attention to that comment, but I wouldn’t automatically accept it as a diagnosis.
If the priest meant that you tend to construct an attractive interpretation of your experience—something aesthetically or philosophically satisfying—that could be useful information.
Because there is a possibility that your gift and your defense are closely related.
You are very good at finding meaning.
That is a strength.
But meaning-making can sometimes become a way of getting away from an uncomfortable feeling before you’ve actually stayed with it.
So perhaps the question isn’t:
“Is my beautiful interpretation true or false?”
but:
“Can I let the uncomfortable thing be true without needing immediately to turn it into a lesson?”
You might have been disappointed with yourself driving Jeremiah. You might have genuinely fallen short. You might have felt weak. You might also have dignity. All of those things can coexist.
That, to me, is actually a deeper version of your “two sides” insight.
What I think you’re discovering
There is a very compelling thread running through the whole piece:
You are learning to hold contradictory truths without forcing one of them to defeat the other.
I am strong and sometimes weak.
I have dignity and I fall short.
I love my life and sometimes wonder what else is out there.
The monastery fulfills something profound in me and it doesn’t eliminate every human longing.
I can be proud of myself and remain humble.
Something can hurt and not mean something terrible about me.
And perhaps most importantly:
A feeling is real without necessarily being the final interpretation of reality.
That seems to be the wisdom you’re circling around.
The reflection itself is somewhat meandering, but I wouldn’t regard that as a flaw at this stage. The repetition of “another perspective,” “two sides,” “falling short,” and “dignity” actually shows you thinking your way toward something. If you ever wanted to shape this into a more finished piece, I think the strongest organizing idea would be not “two perspectives” but “learning not to turn one perspective into the whole truth.”
That feels like the real discovery underneath what you’ve written.
Big hug sweetie...I hope that your talk with your dad helped
With regards to Jeremiah as much as we may want to step in when we see things wrong there's only so much anyone can do unless one can step in legally and that's pretty extreme
I hope that when he settles he or he with some guidance will reach out
Help will be there for him when he's ready
The AI can be really helpful
I feel like I'm living in a different universe now
A little scary to me but I think that's my age showing...lol
Thanks Janet!! ((Hug))