Double Negatives

Are we in math class or real LIFE?  One wrong times another wrong equals one right, correct?

If that were true we would be doubling up on our wrong decisions just to be right a third of the time. That amounts to being 66.6% wrong in decision making to only 33.3% right.  Not good odds. Perhaps there’s something flawed with that logic.

When I look at my own life and reconsider all the dumb things that I’ve done, I doubt I knew at the time that those decisions were dumb until I felt the repercussions from them, because negative repercussions teach us enhanced awareness.  Non-negative response teaches acceptance of the behavior.

But the key question to me is asking “WHY?” we did dumb stuff in the first place. I usually justify my past by simply saying  I was “young and dumb” at the time—which means inexperienced, naïve, too trusting, too restless and searching for something I had no idea what I was searching for, or too easily manipulated into something I knew was potentially wrong but thought I could handle anyway.

But let’s be honest here, are those accurate descriptors of how my wrong choices occurred? Probably not, because I doubt anyone could make me do something I didn’t really want to do. I’m far too stubborn for that and always have been.

So the wrongness of my actions must have been solely my own choice. But then were those or any previous actions really wrong if they led me to my current life and point of awareness? Did their rightness or wrongness make me who I currently am—older, wiser, more aware of how easy it is to hurt others, more compassionate toward those who are still struggling to find themselves or to believe in themselves? Maybe it did.  Or maybe that’s just how I choose to view it.

The annoying thing about the past is that you can’t change it—not in this lifetime. You can learn from your previous mistakes and make adjustments in your behavior to prevent making them again, but you can’t NOT DO what you actually DID DO. That’s just how it is. 

Can’t NOT DO—hence the ‘double negative’ approach to learning here.  We cannot undo what is already done. Our only choice now is to use that enhanced awareness to guide our current and future actions. We can beat ourselves up for our previous stupidity and think less of ourselves for being that dumb in the past, but doing so is clearly unhelpful to others and to ourselves. The only positive thing we CAN do is move forward from this point on with our hard-won education in how NOT TO act or what NOT TO do.

Make full use of your past pain and current knowledge to better guide your future actions. We all make mistakes. Give yourself a chance to do better next time. Intentionally living ‘a better tomorrow’ is a choice that we make daily.