I left a couple of friends hanging today. Never mind that it was an
honest mistake, it was a fairly big screw-up on my end. The
inconvenience factor was high, since getting together on the chat (it
was a phone call) was rather a big effort for at least one of them, and
I believe the other had to do some major scheduling mojo to make it all
work. Not cool, in other words.
We all screw up from time-to-time. Certainly, I know this from
experience. We all have moments of forgetfulness, or, as in my case, a
lack of foresight (I should have at least set an alarm or alert or
something). And the best we can do is own up to it, and apologize. The
thing is, at times like this, you can wonder how to make a boner into a
plus -- you know, turning lemons into lemonade? And I think the sad
fact is, no amount of feel-good platitudes can erase the mistake, and no
amount of mental dexterity can transmute it into gold when the sole
opportunity to do well was effectively wedged into people's lives to
begin with. When there's no wiggle room, mistakes are permanent and
sometimes grand.
In this case, it's not quite that bad, but it was certainly a
rude-seeming thing on my part -- at least from the other points-of-view
-- and doubtlessly a real annoyance to them. Sometimes all you can do
is go on. All you can do is be the asshole for a while, and try to win
back trust, if it's gone, or take their gentle ribbing as your due if
it's not. And sometimes, it falls somewhere in the middle, such that,
now, no one is sure where you stand. Are you a jerk? Are you
incompetent? Are you too distracted to be trustworthy? The answer
could be none of these things, but all you've got is the "now", and, if
you're lucky, a tomorrow or two: what you had, the credit built up from
a history of dependability, has been called into question at the least.
Maybe it's not gone or even tarnished, but then again, maybe it is. The
point here, is that you can't rely on it as much as before. You "owe"
them, or you have to "make it up to them" or some other such thing that
seems like you can put paid on a debt. But we all know that it's not
quite that simple. There isn't anything that will remove a mistake from
your personal history, nor should there be: if we can't at least LEARN
from them, there seems hardly any reason for free will at all. If I use
this moment to improve myself, even by a tiny bit, then the screw-up
might not happen again. If I don't, then it might. Hell, it might
anyway, but THAT, on its own, would be telling.
I'm not beating myself up over this, despite how this might read. But a
bit of reflection never hurt anybody, especially after a mistake has
been made. Since such things can repeat themselves, and hurt or
disappoint others accordingly, being more aware of them hardly seems an
over-reaction. Owning up is, first and foremost, about improving
oneself. It's about apologizing and smoothing feathers too, but the
real good comes from the admission, and the acknowledgment that a
mistake has occurred -- because if it happened once, it could happen
again. And I guess, after all, that IS a good thing of a kind: lemonade
from lemons, maybe, but tart and unrefreshing. I'll not have seconds,
thank you.
