self deception

May 18, 2025

Why the Young Dismiss the Old

I am a Boomer born at the front end of the post-war population explosion. My mom, Jeanette, was delighted that Milt Stein returned alive from the killing fields of Europe, crossing the ocean to create me–the soon-to-bloom child they would plant in the world.

Dad was overjoyed to reunite with the beauty he married in 1940, and proud of his newborn son. I’m told it was a joyous scene, and the photos agree.

In the past, old age, which I have acquired by accepting the honesty of the clocks, calendars, and mirrors, required formal respect. The Ten Commandments insist on honoring your father and mother.

Something has changed.

Setting aside the mess Boomers handed humanity, I’d like to answer a critical question: What else accounts for the tendency to dismiss the accumulated experience, knowledge, and guidance of many of the “ancient ones” still around?

Let’s consider six causes of the dismissal of oldster members of the psychedelic era and eight reasons why paying attention to those oldies might be helpful.

1. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a vigorous and vital human of recent vintage to think he will achieve decrepitude. I recall my mother, looking into the mirror in midlife, saying out loud, “When did this happen?” The shape of those who resemble creatures from another planet contributes to believing their opinions pertain to life on Mars.

2. The unfashionable dress, forgotten hairstyles, and limited movement of the now-aged “peace and love” crowd don’t fit well in a world spinning like a top. Since some of us care less about technological trends than is customary, our disinterest reinforces the notion that we are missing the point. Nor do the still-breathing antiques sport earbuds, a practice that will enrich audiologists for years to come.

We are perceived as creatures from outer space or as being born before smart phones, passenger jet planes, computer games, AI, and super cool sneakers.

Yup.

3. We lived before the words “authenticity” and “my truth,” as well as freedom from pretense became mandatory. Indeed, pretense and opportunity were most of what we had going for us. We tried to “fake it to make it.” A student named Jack Weinberg at the University of California, Berkeley, coined the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30” during the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. The sixties generation was a skeptical bunch, except when getting high.

4. Relative youth (let’s say before 40) brings a robust and necessary sense of competence and flexibility. Work now demands more time and expects more self-created ways to make money.

By contrast, the retired crowd lived a slower and less demanding life, and some had lifelong employment in the same place. The University of Illinois, my state college, charged about $100 per quarter. Yes, we emerged in a better moment, but only if our color was white.

5. At a young age, people tend to think they are smart enough to avoid the mistakes made by their elders. Older adults have erred and have the memories to prove it. Their juniors believe they are smarter and claim Elvis is dead to persuade the disbelievers.

Hmm.

The whippersnappers do not think our accumulated knowledge fits the current century. They might be right.

6. My generation includes several blowhards I could name. They never listen but talk from atop a pedestal made for a king.

Now for the rebuttal. Here are eight reasons to listen to what a thoughtful older individual might say:

1. The wise of any age realize that much of life’s significance is a permanent part of the human condition, rather than true of one epoch or another. Think of the need to survive, the pursuit of status, the wish for happiness, the advantage of developing courage, the desire for love, the emptiness of greed, the danger of moral compromise, and the inevitability of aging, loss, change, and death.

Many things cannot be learned without living them. Still, those who survived the ladder up offer awareness of the trip to those who find themselves a few rungs down.

2. Much of what passes for essential reading these days focuses on advancing oneself in the vocational sector, finding love, or psychological self-healing. Ancient philosophers and writers of classic literature can assist those imprisoned by the algorithm-driven, simple answers a newsfeed offers.

With the decline of the humanities in some of the finest universities, the young have missed studying what many of history’s towering and most admired figures learned from such sources. Homer, Immanuel Kant, Plato, and George Eliot (a woman) live in books one does well to discover.

3. Hearing about your parents’ lives is essential to understanding them. What did they live through? They won’t always be around to tell you.

4. A wise person past his prime will listen and ask questions to help you find your answers. A talented therapist does this. And yes, I have revealed some self-flattery here, and some truth.

5. You will live several lives. If you grow, your perspective on yourself, the world, relationships, youth, love, age, money, values, and more will shift by age 50. What is in store for you is the domain of those ahead of you in this process.

6. A lucky soul does not encounter Fate’s hand early in life and believes he is the captain of his unsinkable ship: self-made and invulnerable.

Scholars once spoke, wrote, and thought of destiny as something outside themselves. They believed Fate and the gods had control they lacked, permitting man only the necessity of adapting to it.

Older individuals sustained encounters between themselves and overwhelming, inexplicable forces. There is value in talking to those who have battled such powers.

7. Most of us, of whatever age, live without realizing “The roof that keeps out the rain also blocks out the sun.”* A man is well-served the sooner he grapples with the tendency to avert his eyes from what is uncomfortable to ponder. This, too, reveals itself in uncovering the choices made in a well-lived and long life.

8. Recognizing the speed of time and feeling (not just knowing) one’s mortal condition will enable you to use your time better. The old have lost friends and loved ones, and cannot deny the acceleration of these blows.

If you doubt you are in transit, peer at the old. They hear the clock, but also remember the early, quieter, more patient procession of the hours. Their awareness has increased, and some will tell you they have regrets you would do well to avoid.

You can take the last section as depressing or recognize its truth and the opportunity it offers to help one lead the fullest, most satisfying life possible. 

Here’s hoping you do. Here’s hoping we all do.

==========

The top image is Marina Karaevangelou’s Megabalanus Coccopoma, the titan acorn barnacle, a tropical species first described by Charles Darwin in 1854. It is followed by the Dalai Lama, as photographed by Christopher in 2010. Finally, Oedipus Questioning the Seer Tiresias, the 1580 painting of Alexander Allori. All of these are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

*The quotation is from André Gide’s Paludes.

December 3, 2023

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves

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Therapists hear stories. Tons of them.

Everyone has one.

The most significant stories represent the essential narrative of a person’s life. You could have just one story that expresses how you see yourself and your journey through time.

It may not even take the form of a specific tale or recollection. Instead, in a paragraph, you might explain how your life has progressed and who you are.

Perhaps you think you are lucky or unlucky. Maybe you see yourself as a “mover and a shaker.”  Do you imagine a handsome and suave (or beautiful and charming) soul as you look in the mirror? Or someone lazy or hardworking or resilient or weak or God-fearing?

But even if there is no yarn attached to the qualities you ascribe to yourself, the character traits you claim are still central to how you see yourself, something you refer to in quiet contemplation.

Nor does the story or characteristic have to be true. It just has to be something that you believe is true.

An example. An old acquaintance thought of himself as a lady’s man, making such politically incorrect comments as this simile: “A woman is like a bus — if you miss this one, there will be another one along in 10 minutes.”

He was clever, energetic, engaging, and outgoing but unremarkable in his level of success and appearance — not particularly tactful either. But when a woman rejected him, he was usually undaunted.

This gentleman even had a theme song of sorts. It was the soaring horn call from the Richard Strauss orchestral tone poem “Don Juan,” representing the bold, dashing title character he believed himself to be. And so, ever on the lookout for attractive women, he did, in fact, have numerous love affairs. Many ended badly, and he was as often rejected as adored.

Another person, no less likable or successful with the opposite sex, might have seen the identical romantic life as disappointing. But our “Don Juan” was rarely chagrined for long and continued to pursue women with vigor.

You might say that our hero had little self-awareness. But, the case can be made that he was more satisfied in living out his romantic life through his chosen vision of himself — through the story he told himself about himself — than if he had defined his role differently. 

He could have devised an alternate narrative, including that of the often jilted, luckless lover.

I am not promoting this man’s approach to women or his less-than-realistic view of himself. That’s not the point.

Instead, his view gave him much romance, happiness, and excitement. In other words, he would have said it worked.

Unlike our friend, I have seen people change their stories over a lifetime. For example, from feeling unlucky to feeling lucky, timid to bold, or mistake-prone to capable.

It is worth asking ourselves what stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Again, they might not stand up to external scrutiny, but they don’t necessarily have to.

We frequently create self-fulfilling prophecies, succeeding or failing because of what we believe will happen or who we believe we are.

The man in question had a lot of romance because he believed many women would find him worth their time. Had he seen himself as a schlemiel, he would have had much less female companionship.

Was his glass half-full or half-empty? That, too, is part of his story, and he certainly looked at life with a hopeful, optimistic gaze and focused on what was best in himself, not his weaknesses.

The person I’ve described had many friends and much pleasure, not only of an amorous variety. He led an active, adventurous life and didn’t hold grudges. Even if his approach to living is not one you would personally choose, do not be too hasty to judge it (especially after I tell you that he is a loving father).

A great man?

No, but then, there aren’t too many of those.

But he found a story that served to achieve fulfillment.

Many of us do worse.

========

The top image is Don Juan and the Statue of the Commander by Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard, oil on canvas, circa 1830 – 835.

The photo below is Portrait of a Young Boy Looking in a Mirror, by A.M. Rothchild and Co., and provided by pellethepoet. Both of the pictures were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

May 16, 2021

Confused by Friends, Family, and Neighbors? Why is the World so Messy?

When I think back to my Chicago Public School education, only two answers existed for the many questions presented to us. One was right, the other wrong.

No, I suppose it wasn’t quite so simple. I had to find the one right answer. All the rest were wrong.

It is evident today that even my five-year-old grandson has opinions, and an astonishing number of us choose to believe a select group of those who deliver opinions. Unlike my elementary school, our country doesn’t agree on the question of what’s right and what’s wrong.

What shall we do with this condition of our equally human lives together? We are assailed by so many who offer a certainty not shared by other voices. They and we live in unshared tents of true belief.

First, dear reader, I don’t want you to accept automatically what I’m about to offer you. I don’t want you to receive my ideas without asking yourself about them. If you don’t step back and consider whether I’m wrong, I shall become another of those supposed authorities who might mislead you by accident or the intention to deceive.

Let’s get back to what I learned early in life.

My sliver of religious education encountered authorities similar to the secular ones employed by the city, in this case having to do with alleged truth about our obligations to a creator and fellow mortals.

Depending on one’s religion, one received God’s all-knowing words, some etched into long-unavailable stone tablets. So the believers believed.

Friends told me about the Catholic churches of the time. Bible reading was discouraged. The priest would inform you of all you needed. Accepting his pronouncements was expected.

The various authorities delivered top-down stature and insistence. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t dare ask who or what is in the boat or where the vessel is docked.

You could ask questions in these centers of learning, but I didn’t ask many early on—most who did attempted to understand what the teacher or the text said, not challenge the instructor.

Parents also authored a version of the law: the rules of the home and how to behave outside. Again, follow the drill. If you don’t, no thrill.

If the city elders put a sign on the Chicago block containing Jamieson School — the gigantic mortar and brick edifice I attended through the eighth grade, it would have read:

WANT TO FAIL? ASK QUESTIONS!

Somehow I got a doctorate. I made a jump of several years here. Hope you are still with me.

What was going on then? What is going on today?

The average American has not been encouraged to ask queries of himself. Not well-considered, thoughtful ones, at least. For example, when the teacher told us about slavery, the telling including a few uncomplicated explanations of how and why.

Almost no instructor asked students, what else? Might there have been other causes, more or fewer?

We could have been asked, “What do you think was going on in the minds of the slaveholders? What motivated them? If you were a slave, how would you have felt?”

Many of the slaveholders claimed adherence to high-minded religious principles. How did these “masters” combine the vision of a loving God with their treatment of men they considered property?

What does this tell us about the ability of some folks to hold contradictions in their minds? Do you think the plantation owners resolved those contradictory beliefs and actions? How? Do such contradictions present themselves in today’s world? Do they live inside you?

What would you have done if you were the son of a mom and dad who kept slaves? Can you be sure without having lived in that moment, in an identical place and time?

Well, you can imagine. If I taught such a class to young people in certain places today, I’d be terminated along with this agenda.

To my benefit, I was a curious kid, one who led a one-person in-home questioning of my family’s life on Talman Avenue.

Whatever the cause, most of us should harbor lots of questions about the world we live in. An endless number. In particular, those without easy answers

Even before we start, however, we must begin by observing more of the world. Socrates, Martin Heidegger, and other philosophers said a typical person sleepwalks his way through life. We see without awareness. We hear without listening.

We peek at life through a tiny lens — as if through the small end of a funnel. We walk down the street peering into phones, examining texts, tweets, headlines, and emails fed to us by those opinionated others I mentioned before. Taking selfies along the way, as well. Everything gets blurry.

Meanwhile, if you challenge yourself to absorb everything else, you might see without a funnel. Notice the road. Why is it closed off? Perhaps you would wonder who decided this? Who benefits? Who doesn’t? How are the asphalt and labor paid for?
 
You’d see homeless people instead of walking past them as we tend to do with discarded furniture, recognizing the humanity in them described in Sabbath sermons. Do these creatures cause problems? How? What do they need? What is your responsibility? Where do they sleep?
 
Recognize the weathered skin of those too long in the sun. Were they born to other homeless people? Did medical bills lead to the loss of proper shelter? Was prescribed medication a stepping stone to addiction?
 
You’d see trees and insects. In some locals, few flies, bees, and butterflies live. Was it always this way? What explains their reduction in numbers? What happens when these beings are in short supply? Are there human consequences due to their diminished number?
 
Do you know population growth is slowing in many countries? This started before the pandemic. Is it a good thing or not? Why are people having fewer babies? How significant a factor is a living wage to the decision to have a child?
 
If you take another intellectual step, immigration policy enters your conversation with yourself. Pro or con? More newcomers would increase the number of inhabitants and produce more children. Helpful for business or not?

I hope you recognize how many issues like this are interconnected with other observations you might make as you widen your eyes to consume what is in front and around you. Prepare yourself for one question leading to another. The experience can be both unsettling and exciting.

We are interlinked to things, bugs, bridges, people, the folks harvesting our crops, the guy who collects our garbage, the environment, the people who build businesses, the men and women working three jobs of necessity, and the police.

We are attached to entities like us who toil in never heard of villages or cities, absent from dusty maps. Some are decent, some indecent, some would give you the shoes they use to walk, and others would steal yours and laugh about it.
 
Socrates, Parmenides, and Heraclitus all observed their neighbors’ failure to open themselves to the world, wonder about it, and raise internal inquiries instead of accepting the opinions of those thought to be more learned or wise. They believed this the natural state of humanity.
 
Why? Why do we hear but don’t listen? Why do we step forward through the day, the places, and the living things without “seeing” them?
 
Why don’t we reflect upon what we perceive of this magnificent, baffling, racing life and begin more questioning rather than reflexively buying into so-called authorities, assuming they are right?
 
The philosophers I mentioned suggested explanations like this one:

We want simple answers. Quick conclusions making us feel better are preferred, whether they help us feel secure, confident, and adequate or project blame for hard times on others instead of ourselves.

If a person admits he doesn’t understand something by asking a question, he risks self-doubt. If this man is unsure around associates, he may appear foolish.

Uncertainty experienced within our complicated lives provokes anxiety for many. Confused, shaky members of the group can be cast out or lose status. Rejecting the accepted ideas of the tribe breaches the unstated rules of membership.

The world is a demanding, competitive place, where few own the luxury of time. It is one where fairness and prosperity are not guaranteed. Making a living, finding a mate, achieving a safe place to live, and raising decent and healthy children can’t be assumed.
 
Better, many believe, not to overthink what others don’t ask about, thus avoiding worry. Last, we cannot escape the grim reaper: death. We will die, as will everyone we know or will know, those dearest to us included—another troublesome topic to be set aside instinctively.
 
Few have the courage to look at the most pressing conditions of existence in the face, nor the person seen in their mirror. Thus, only the strongest can take on the surroundings in one swallow that includes everything — the beautiful and the awful together.
 
Small bites of the least unsettling bits of it come naturally to the human condition. No, don’t ask too many troublesome questions without comforting, fortifying answers. When in doubt, trust your friends and maybe the people they trust. If you take a widemouthed gulp of the whole world, you might drown.
 
Ah, but the same philosophers also believed there is an upside here. If you are brave enough to perceive everything as it is and engage in questions on a large scale, you will become a more excellent person. You may then alter your life’s path and the history of those around you.

This kind of courage, curiosity, and wonder offers engagement with whatever exists ahead. The well-being you want for those you love and the world’s future requires people such as you shall thereby become.

The possibility of discovering the best possible version of yourself remains down this road. I hope you seek it.

==========

The first image is the Yukon River, Dalton Highway, Alaska by Laura Hedien, with her kind permission. Next comes Oswaldo Guayasamin’s Waiting. Finally, a Buddhist Lama, 1913, sourced from History Daily.

October 25, 2020

Why We Don’t Always Know Ourselves and Why That’s a Good Thing

Some of my best friends don’t know themselves well. Moreover, there is often value in not knowing. Nonetheless, both those with lots of self-awareness and those without tend to overrate their knowledge of “who they are.”

We humans benefit from believing our march through life is an honorable endeavor. Most of us stop at red lights, let pedestrians cross, and smile when a stranger says hello.

Few take glee in admitting they’ve harmed others, broken rules undercover, and spoken untruth. We prefer to believe we deserve whatever we’ve achieved, rather than attributing our triumphs to cheating.

When a man acts beneath his best, he tends to justify his actions. Sometimes the reason he gives to himself is loyalty. At other times his sense of unfairness justifies employing the identical ruthless tactics the enemy uses against him.

Another category of rationalization includes survival in a competitive world. If you work in a dark-sided corporate or political culture, continued employment might demand persuading yourself, “this is just the way things are done.”

All of us travel through an imperfect world of flawed inhabitants, not an idealistic one. As we grow up, experience reveals the best man doesn’t always win, power and money increase mating opportunities, and who you know sometimes trumps what you know.

The adaptation to conditions “as they are” can evoke less than saintly behavior.

You might wonder why we possess this readiness to violate the messages we hope our kids learn in their religious education. In part, we must credit our resourceful ancestors.

In wartime, periods of scarcity, or episodes of other physical dangers, they used all their know-how and ingenuity to survive. Sometimes deception saved a life, as did theft when their child or tribe confronted famine. Strength, smarts, and strategy, along with viciousness, defeated enemies.

Can you imagine your chances if you lacked any motivation to act in your own interest? Two-thousand years ago, Rabbi Hillel, a Jewish sage, raised this issue and more:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I?

A too accurate peek at our mirror image allows uncomfortable truths concerning ourselves and our beloved social circle.

Every successful marriage, for example, values the spouse for more than what he is. A loss of trust might follow from full recognition of the worst in those around us, forcing a crippling exaggeration of danger.

The magnification of personal defects also creates a frightful sight. Without psychological shielding, the soul is brought to its knees. One’s life might be reinterpreted as a fraud. How could we function in the world without a few of the lies told by ourselves to ourselves?

With a built-in capacity for at least a bit of self-deception, we face away from weaknesses like an unbridled penchant for antagonism or the avoidance of confrontation. Many of us project our shaded motives and dispositions on those different from us in race, religion, or politics.

Blindness to our situation frequently leads to emotional pain and poor choices. When the discomfort becomes considerable, therapists are consulted. The unveiling of revelations, however, must involve a gradual and careful process. The therapist shouldn’t disarm us by obliterating the beliefs on which we lean.

As Marshall Greene wrote in 1997, defenses help “the patient ward off disturbing feelings such as anxiety, anger, disgust, depression, envy, jealousy, guilt and shame.”

Counselors grasp this. Each of them encounters a phenomenon called “resistance in the service of the ego.” The psychologist takes care not to approach the client as though his mind is a walnut requiring a hammer blow to crack it.

The ache of past hurts, as well as the stark and startling acknowledgment of character limitations, can sink the patient before he learns to swim. Clients must float before the internal uncovering strips him of defensive buoyancy and his long-established tool kit of life skills.

The ancient Greek Temple of Apollo included the inscription “Know thyself” in its forecourt. Perhaps the designer should have considered a safer alternative:

“Know thyself (but not too much)”

———

The first image comes from an unknown Google source. The second is the work of Loveteamin. Finally, Barlow in Hiding is the work of Andrew Smith. The last two pictures are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

If you are interested in powerful theatrical representations of families with an uncomfortable relationship with the truth of who they are, you might read or watch Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

January 29, 2011

On the Elusiveness of Vindication (and How Special It is When It Happens)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_013.jpg/256px-Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_013.jpg

I suspect there is hardly anyone among us who has not hoped that the person who broke our heart would come back to us, see the light, apologize, and say:

You know what? I was wrong. I didn’t give you a chance. I should have. You deserved better treatment than you received from me. It was unfair of me to blame you as I did, not to see how good you are.  I hope that you will forgive me and we can start over.

Vindication can take a number of forms. It might involve being reinstated to a position you lost unfairly, being exonerated of a crime you were alleged to have (or convicted of having) committed, receiving a belated medal for acts of courage performed in combat, or having a parent apologize for abusive or neglectful mistreatment.

There is only one problem.

When the injury is great, these things almost never happen. Or, if they do, they come much too late. Think about the occasional news story that documents the exoneration of someone who had been wrongly imprisoned after years behind bars, now finally permitted to return to civilian life. Or the long-denied medal for heroic service to one’s country in an almost forgotten war, awarded to a man now aged or perhaps deceased, and therefore only a posthumous recipient of the honor.

Perhaps even rarer is the parent who apologizes for child abuse. First, such people rarely acknowledge the extent of what they have done. And, to the degree that there is any recognition or admission of  mistreatment of their child, it is nearly always minimized on the one hand, and justified on the other; justified, usually by the child’s alleged misbehavior or provocation.

By the time the parents in question are senior citizens, the fog of time and self-deception has clouded and distorted their memory. Moreover, were they to admit (even to themselves) what they had done, they would almost certainly be shattered and humbled by that self-awareness; and left with the fact that there would be no way to make up for the lost time and the pain they inflicted – not enough of a future available to redeem the sorry state of the past and remove the stain on their conscience.

Perhaps it is therefore not surprising that they do not admit their errors even when confronted – in effect cannot do so psychologically without jeopardizing their ability to live with any measure of equanimity.

My wife likes to say that her favorite punishment for such people would be one minute of self-awareness. Unfortunately, they are the least likely among us to achieve this kind of insight.

A useful book to read on the subject is Frauen by Alison Owings. Owings interviewed numerous German women who had lived through the period of the Third Reich. She observed the extent to which self-deception, rationalization, and denial were present as they looked back upon what they claimed they knew or witnessed (or didn’t know), and what they did or didn’t do in response to the mistreatment and murder of their Jewish neighbors by the Nazis.

Beyond the individual level, even nations have a problem admitting that wrong has been done in their name. Turkey continues to deny the Armenian genocide of the twentieth century’s second decade, while Austria and France have historically skirted their participation in the Holocaust, preferring to be considered co-victims with other sufferers of Germany’s misdeeds.

And, it was not until 1988, that the United States formally apologized for the 1942 forced internment of Pacific Coast residents of the USA, solely because they were of Japanese decent, in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of those people, 62% were US citizens.

While none of what I’ve described thus far permits a very optimistic take on human nature, I do want to relate one very beautiful story I heard from a former patient on this subject. It stands out because it demonstrates that obtaining personal vindication does happen every so often, and can produce any enormously healing experience for both parties involved. I’ve changed the circumstances of the story to disguise the identity of my patient, but I think you will get the idea.

The young woman in question was a high school volley ball player, a member of the school’s team. She was a junior and had played, usually as a starter, for most of the season. Her coach was a young woman as well, that is to say, a relatively new teacher, just shortly out of training.

Toward the end of the season, the student’s mother was to receive a special award from her workplace. Mom and dad both wanted their daughter to be at the dinner honoring the mom, and the young athlete wanted to be there as well. Unfortunately, the award ceremony conflicted with an important game for her team. She explained in advance to her coach that she would not be able to play in that game, but the coach was furious. Thereafter the coach repaid her absence by keeping her on the bench for most of the remainder of the season and treating her with disdain.

Although she liked volleyball, my future patient chose not to try-out for the team as a senior, expecting either to fail to make the roster chosen by the same coach; or, if permitted to be on the team, anticipating the same sort of mistreatment from her for another year. And so, the athlete’s high school athletic career ended prematurely.

This turn of events did not, however, destroy her love for the game. She continued to play in various park district leagues for many years. But the memory of being humiliated by the coach did not go away, nor of the lost senior year of competition that she might otherwise have enjoyed, playing a game she loved.

Perhaps 10 years after the incidents I’ve described, this woman was now my patient. And one day she told me that just the day before she had found herself in another volley ball contest against a new team. And, wouldn’t you know it, she saw that one of the opposing players was her old coach, now in her early to mid-thirties.

My patient recognized the coach, but hoped the recognition was not mutual. As the game progressed they soon enough were face-to-face across the net from each other. The coach said “hello,” calling her by name, and my patient replied in kind. Perhaps, she thought, that would be the end of their interaction.

At the end of the game, however, the coach came over to my patient. She asked if she could speak with her privately. They moved away from the other volleyball players to a place where they would not be overheard.

What the young woman’s ex-coach said went something like this:

I’ve thought about you for many years. I realize that what I did to you was very unfair. I took your decision not to play that game too personally. Of course, there was nothing wrong with your attending a dinner recognizing your mother. Who wouldn’t have? I was very young, but I should have known better than to treat you as badly as I did. I have felt guilty for years that I caused you pain and that I made it almost impossible for you to even think of trying-out for the senior team. I have been hoping to run into you all this time, so that I could say this. I’m so sorry.

As my patient related this story to me she was in tears, enormously touched by what the coach had said. The coach had given her closure for a painful part of her history and had done it with grace, courage, and integrity; taking full responsibility for injuring my patient. In so doing, I suspect the coach found relief too, because her former charge was an enormously likeable, decent, and forgiving person.

Everyone here was a winner.

As I said, the tale stands out for me because this kind of ending occurs so rarely. I suspect many of us have been the victims of similar hurts.

But, perhaps more importantly, some of us have probably inflicted comparable injuries on others.

Sometimes its worth reflecting on that — on one’s own failures and mistreatment of others.

You just might discover that like the coach, there is still an opportunity to put things right.

Of course, that is up to you.

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The image above is Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.