Temerity

I have had tremendous opportunity offered to me a time or two in my life; not just the opportunity, but true support to back it up.

I am pondering those times because there is a young person I know who is about to blow a good chance, an "opportunity to excel." Many people on the edge of a challenge have heard those words, sometimes mockingly, but always with "No Turnaround Here" implied. Time after time, a person told, "here is your opportunity to excel," has a pause, a mental stop, the pupils enlarge, the chest deepens a breath and a breadth, and the knowing quickens and then, the step into the next greater future is taken.

I don't like this person too much, as familiarity breeds contempt; I've learned too much. Familiarity breeds contempt. Isn't that a famous quote?

There must be a corollary, "I love the me I see in you," which axiom's polar opposite must be more true: I hate the me I see in you.

In this person I see the judgmental me, the snide remarks, the cutting words, the blame language ("it's all their fault! Not me! It wasn't me! I didn't do it!") the self-awarded superiority; the inability to know when to shut up. Just STFU.

It has taken me more than fifty years to learn to not speak the language from the Land of Blame.

I am not without compassion. I recognize and know, because I am twice as old, and have children of that age, that if the person should want to hear and listen to me, I could help. I could help a whole lot.

This young person could gain years and years of better living not making the same mistakes, not suffering the same losses I have. If only.

A person who causes me friction or annoyance is someone I can learn from (in my self-designed beliefs) if nothing more than how to not engage, how to not become enmeshed, how to survive the encounter intact and none the worse for wear. That person is a challenge, it is an adventure rightly considered.

You see, this young person is very angry, and now we know unvetted by human resources, so we've come to find out there are two stalking orders against her and several other criminal and civil charges. Far, far, far too many counts for a person her age.

Ah, I see, another one too smart for her own good.

I feel sadness and compassion but my days of enabling this kind of person are long, long over.

This serves to make her very, very angry that I am not falling into the emotional manipulation.

I made a choice. I did what I think I have to do in the circumstances: I provided our supervisor with a point paper of the facts - I am letting him research it for himself. She will have choices.

Everything, everyday, at all times we have choices.


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