Handy Polymath

Knowing what one did wrong before is not the sole requirement for making a better decision in the future.

We shouldn’t have let our first one suffer so long, so much. It was selfish to place our pain at losing a friend over the pain she had every day at the end.

Easy decisions can be corrected like adjusting the level of a picture frame.

I promised I would be a better steward with you. I promised myself, and I promised you.

Difficult calls will always be difficult. All one can do is resolve not to make the same mistake twice.

I’ve denied your pain out of what I thought was guilt; ignoring the inconvenience of what was going on because I didn’t want that to affect my decision. In so doing, I stopped seeing you and feeling what you were dealing with. Because once I saw it and felt it, I knew I had to let you go.

This means that one is consigned to making a variety of mistakes in a conscious effort to learn, gain wisdom, and embrace the practice of engaging with life and not hiding from it.

I could be wrong. I could be denying you weeks or months of enjoying the summer, listening to the birds, smelling the breeze, sleeping in the sun. I could be right. I could be saving you weeks and months of escalating pain.

It’s risky to trade a known fallout for a unknown result. Could be the right thing. Could be even worse. All I know is that I cannot do what I did before.

I do know there’s only a short while left. That the moments when you’re content are becoming few. That you trust me with your life and that means being responsible for the quality of it, and not keeping you in a place where you are suffering. You are my friend, and I am yours.