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You Can't Take It Back... · Wanzology

• You Can’t Take It Back  Baby, here we are, waiting here for time to play the game. And let love steal us away!! Hi, what's happening? Welcome to another episode of, uh, WANZOLOGY!! I'm your host, The Wanz welcoming you to another Wednesday or day of your choosing as long as it ends in ‘Y’. How ya doing? You good? You good? Well, if you can hear the sound of my voice, I have joyous news, you're still here. And I'm happy about that 'cause I didn't wanna do this by myself, ya feel me? Right on. The world is challenging at best as we already know, right? And some of us find life a bit more challenging than others. I came to a startling realization last week. The end of last week, I realized that there are no refunds. There are no returning items when it comes to life. Life has no rebates, no returns. You can't take it back. You can't take your life back because, once something has happened, well, it's happened, and that's it. Get it? One-way door. Life happens. It doesn't not happen 'cause if it's not happening, that means you're not happening. I don't like that proposition at all, but it's true. What got me thinking about this is there's a process in recovery called making amends, where you make a list of people you think you've harmed, and then you go and make amends to them all, which is different from an apology. Saying that you're sorry that something happened to somebody is not the same as saying, "I was responsible for this, and I'm sorry. If there is any way I can make it right, please let me know." Meaning, it's an apology with a follow-up that YOU have to do something. That's an amends. And some amends are returning the money or sending a letter to somebody, and then there are some amends that you live on a daily basis. You pledge to do better, to not do what you did before that hurt somebody, and that's called living amends. Those are what I would call a little bit more impactful. Why? Because you see them every day. You get a chance to live them every day. Whereas if it's sent by letter, the amends gets read and that's it. Now, the wording may be the same, but to me, there's something drastically different between a living amends and a written amends. Both are viable, both are good choices. We should always make amends for our mistakes against other people, especially the ones that we care about. But a living amends, a living amends is different because every single day, you are required to keep that amends at the front of your brain. What's a good example of a, of a living amends? A good living amends is, "I'm sorry that I killed your favorite fish. If I can replace that fish, which was your favorite, with another fish, I will take care of that fish for the rest of either mine or its life." That's a living amends. You did something, it hurt somebody, you propose a solution, and it's something that you can demonstrate. There's nothing like the power of a live demonstration, and nothing says demonstration like taking care of something or someone. That being said, I wanna make sure that you don't misunderstand. Making an amends is the point. Now, you could make an amends A, B, or C. How you make the amends is kinda up to you, but it's making the amends that is the important part. That's where the meat of the sandwich is. got it? Making an amends with someone is one of the only ways that you can get a return, a pleasant return, hopefully, on bad behavior. Life keeps moving forward. You can't go back. There is no rebate. There is no do-over. You can do the same thing over and over again, but every time you do it, it's different from the time before. Don't think so? Think about brushing your teeth. You brush your teeth at least once a day, but you can't go back three days and re-brush your teeth. You can't go back a week and take back what you said to that person on transit. You can't go back a year to take back those hateful words that you said to that person you claimed that you loved. You can't go back, there is no going back. You just can't. Time doesn't work that way So you may ask yourself, "Well, how do I prevent getting into that jackpot in the first place?" I don't know, different things work for different people. I am challenged with finding a solution to that myself. I was on a little excursion with a friend of mine. We wanted to go to the Olympic Peninsula to check out a campground. She's going to be leading an entourage over there, and she wanted to see what it looked like to better be able to plan appropriately for who was going to go camping, Great! No problem! Nice little day trip, see you later. Rode a ferry over. It was beautiful. Drove through the countryside, beautiful. Came to the campground and we looked around. Other than me making jokes about being too old to sleep on the bloody ground, it was pretty cool. But on the way back, I was told I had a tendency to interrupt, and the way it was told to me was done in such a way that it took me aback, and I thought about it. It wasn't accusatory, it wasn't mean, it wasn't sarcasm, snark. I asked people to tell me the truth, and this person told me the truth, and I had to think about it. After thinking about it, I looked at this person and I said, "You know what? I am really, really sorry. This is something that I've been trying to work on, evidently, I need a lot of work. Can you explain how you came to notice this?" So we went back over a conversation that we had had like five minutes before, and I saw that I had made the mistake of listening to respond rather than listening in a curious way, interested in what was being said. Do you do that? Ever notice when you do that? When you're listening and while you're listening to somebody else talk, you're thinking of what you can say to respond or retort or react to whatever it is they're saying. For me, it's not easy. This was the two-by-four in the center of the forehead for me. I thanked her for bringing this to my attention, then went over how it was brought to my attention and how that rarely ever happened in my upbringing. Because of my upbringing, socially, I was always defensive. I always needed to protect myself, which led to me always having to prove myself (one word). I always had to prove that I knew something, prove that I could do something, prove that I could sing something. I had to prove that I could go places. At least that's what it felt like. The comparison bug had me by the throat, and I looked around and never ever was even with anyone else, I was always behind. So I felt I had to over-perform in order to be equal, which as I've gotten older, I find is not the case. That's not how it works. That's just how I see it. Well, you can change your perspective. You can look at things a different way. You can look at things two or three different ways. You don't have to look at one thing one way forever. So what did I learn? I learned I need to be more vigilant in conversations. Now, I'm not sure if I can actually improve, but I know what I need to do, and that's very important. Kinda like having a destination anytime you leave your abode. When you go outside, you're going somewhere. You're not just going outside to go outside. I was reminded in rethinking that interchange with my friend, people wish they could take things back. Remember when we were kids and it's like you called somebody a name and they said, "Take that back!" The other person said, "Oh, okay, I take it back," and that was the end of it? Well, that's not the actual end of it. Never was. Once you've said something, you've said it. And if somebody heard something, they heard it. There's no taking it back. The phrase, ‘you can't unring that bell’, comes to mind. And once it's done, it's done. But then what? What are you willing to be responsible for? Are you gonna be responsible for what you did or said? O,r are you going to try to not be responsible for how the other person heard you or reacted to you? Only one of these things you have any control over. Once something is done, it's done. You have to accept that it's done. But you always have the power and the privilege of how you accept what has happened. Maybe you're at a restaurant, and for some ungodly reason, you're gonna pay with cash. So you pay with cash, and when the change comes back, they gave you one ten dollar bill too many. Do you just leave? Or once you spot the mistake, do you go back and say, "Oops, you gave me too much"? They call that ‘cash register honesty’. Pretty tough to do with debit and credit cards these days, but it still happens every once in a while. If you say to someone something that hurts their feelings, how do you take it back? Again, you can't, because once it's said, it's said. The question becomes: How are you going to be responsible for what was said and what was heard? How are you gonna do that? If you were gonna make an amends, what were you gonna make an amends for? Something you said? Something you did? Did you break something? Well, you may have broken somebody's heart. You may have broken their brain. You hurt them in some way, they are injured, and you didn't mean to do it. It just happened that way. But you didn't mean for it to happen the way it happened. The consequence of your action caused pain. That's what I mean by you can't take it back. Once it's done, it's done. So what do you do? How do you become accountable? One) you acknowledge what you did, and if you're not sure, ask that person, the hurt one, "What did I do? What did I say? How did I say it? I wanna know how it made you feel." And then you just own up to it, because nobody else was talking. You seemed to say it. You promised you were gonna be home at a certain time, and because you weren't home at a certain time, that person that you care about missed an opportunity that would have benefited you both. Well, you can't get that time back, right? So what do you do after you say, "I'm so sorry"? How would you make an amends for something like that? I think a good start would be, "I think that I could use a couple of reminders going through the day so that I don't miss something we were going to do or we are invested in." Because it's a we thing, right? She's... She or he is gonna go do whatever they want, but when it's a we thing, it's both of you. So it doesn't matter whether I'm talking to a man or a woman or somewhere in between. As an individual, if you are with someone and you do something or don't do something and it causes someone pain, don't just apologize, make an amends. Show someone that you've learned from a mistake. By the way, just because you say that you've learned from a mistake doesn't mean you've actually learned from that mistake. I saw a meme today that said, "One time is an accident. Two times is a decision." Well, I disagree with that. I disagree in the sense that the first time it was an accident. If it happens a second time, was it still an accident or was it intentional? And if it happens a third time, why wasn't it as intentional as the second time? If you forget to turn something off... Gosh, when I was growing up, it was the light. Leave a room, leave the light on, Mom would be chirping, "Go back and turn that light off." "Oh, I'm sorry." It would happen twice, three times a day. So naturally, when I started living with other people who weren't my family and lights got left on, oh yeah, that was me. "Are you gonna leave that light on? You gonna go back and turn it off? You gonna go back? You gonna go back and turn it off?" Or dishes in the sink. Boy, my mom was just the Gestapo when it came to dishes in the sink. Sure enough, when I was living with some other guys in college, I was the ‘sink Gestapo’. I've mellowed with age, but I still look at how things happened compared to how things now happen. I don't have to make as many amends because I am quick to admit that I'm wrong about something when it's pointed out in a way that is not accusatory. That's the other side of the ball, that's somebody else's innards. That's somebody else's self that I or you have no control over. The best you can do is the best that you can do. That means you have to reach out to start the accountability process. "I'm sorry, did I do that? You're feeling like ‘this’.” “Did I say that? Oh, I didn't mean to say that, and I'm sorry that it hurt you. What can I do to make it up for you? Is there something I can do to help you feel better? Is there a way that I can make it right?" You can't go back and change it, but you can go forward to make it right, and that's way better than trying to go back. As I've said, you can't go back, ya can't go back and choose another career. You can't go back to that part of the vacation where your wallet got stolen or your purse or your car. We can't go back, we only go forward, just like time. It's not about how much time we have. It's what we do with the time that we've been given. That's what Gandalf teaches us in the very first Lord of the Rings. So what are you gonna do? Listen more? Listen to understand rather than respond? Are you gonna be more curious? I'm gonna make it a point to try to be more curious about what someone says. I always felt like I had to prove how intelligent I am. I always feel like I have to prove how talented I am. I feel like sometimes I have to prove how courageous or responsible or sensitive or vulnerable I am, when the reality is I don't have to prove anything. I just have to be honest about it. Can you do that? Can you be honest about making mistakes as honest as you are about triumphs? Can you be as honest about losses? It's up to you. It's not gonna change overnight, but you have to start somewhere. Why not now? 'Cause you can't go back five minutes ago and start then, right? You can't take it back, you can't go back, so let's go on together! Thank you very, very much for paying attention, checking me out, I really appreciate it. Go forth and let's all work on changing our listening habits. Maybe that will change our speaking habits and people won't get hurt as much. I will if you will. See you later.