Five Minute Friday: NEXT

NEXT

With apologies that this post is a bit cryptic, the topic won’t stay subdued, so here goes.

As I shared on social media earlier this week, my colleague and friend, Katie, shares a daily kindness text. One of the kindness texts this week resonated with me in a way that was deeper than the others (which were also great).

I turned it into a graphic. Many people said they loved it. One brave person said she isn’t sure it’s always possible. I struggled mentally with who my “someone” would be.

I also struggled with what comes next after the forgiving.

In my situation, the scenario isn’t one where the other individual violated me in any way – it wasn’t a robbery or some other thing that would make people say, “Now THAT was a crime!”

It was — to try to put words around it — a result of timing. We didn’t know each other well enough to have established trust, and I had a lot riding on our interactions. My sense of where I fit in was affected by our interactions, and my sense of competence (it always comes down to that for me).

Because those were the two things affected, I realized every time I turned this situation over in my mind that it wasn’t so much that the individual needed to be forgiven. I needed to figure out how to forgive myself (for feeling unsure in general, and for a few attempts to right the ship that came across (perhaps) as too aggressive, not assertive enough or in some other way out of place)).

*** end of five minutes ***

It’s one thing to forgive someone involved in a situation that led to ill will. It’s a more difficult process to set a scene for what comes next that edifies everyone involved.

Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)