Not a Pity Party

So, I'm just wondering, do you guys ever feel stupid? I mean really, mortified-to-think-that-I-ever-said-or-did-that stupid?

I would love to permanently delete some memories from my soft and gray-matter hard drive but, try as I might, all I can manage to do is bury them for awhile. Then they work their way back to the surface like those nasty rocks and old nails that crop up every year in my vegetable garden -- the same garden that I raked and smoothed and cleared so carefully last year from all the rocks and nails caught in the clumps of soil.

I fear that neither my garden nor my memory will ever be free of these unwanted, useless bits of rubbish.

I'm tempted to share some of these events with you here. Somehow it feels like if I "confess" them and acknowledge how rude/thoughtless/careless/selfish/stupid I was, it will somehow exonerate me and lay the beasts to rest for once and for all. Reason and the remnants of self-respect, however, are taking the upper hand here, and I will refrain from burdening and boring you with petty tales of my stupidity.

You're all my friends anyway, and would pat me consolingly on the back and tell me I'm just human and not nearly as stupid as I'm feeling. Either that or you'd all silently gag at your computer screens, shake your heads collectively at my imbecility (can't use stupid again, or it will sound . . . well . . . stupid), and then pretend you didn't read my post so you don't have to respond. It's okay; I wouldn't have been offended, but I won't put you in that awkward position.

Suffice it to say that there is a portion of my being that is callous and careless; surely not intentionally, but somehow innately and irrevocably clueless. It was there in my youngest days, resurfaced powerfully through my teen years, and has managed to pop up at the most inconvenient times throughout what has been intended to be my adult (read: grown-up) life. To some, it comes off as naïveté. To others, inscrutable self-absorption.

Honestly, it's both. I keep thinking that I'm growing up -- wising up, but I'm beginning to suspect that it is just the busy-ness of my daily life that keeps me from being devastatingly exposed for who I really am:

Ordinary. Flawed. Uneducated. Self-centered. Small. Lazy. Short-sighted. Stupid.

No fear, my friends. As Mr. Bennett says in Austin's Pride and Prejudice, this latest wave of remorseful self-reproach "will pass, and sooner than it should, I am sure," much like recovering from a nasty bout of "I really shouldn't have eaten that"-itis.

Today, however, I am feeling a little sad for the time that I have wasted being stupid, and am resolving to be less so in the future.

This, I believe, is wise.