Drinks With Doug

Humility
Lessons Learned Over Again

Tuesday's weather: continued mild, as it has been since Friday, although not as warm. Upper 50's probably, slight haze in the sky and low sun. Still, bulbs are well on their way to coming up, and I must get the garden ready.
Tuesday's drink: later tonight, at our block meeting with the developers trying to build a monstrosity on 13th and U, no doubt some crummy white wine. When everyone goes home, perhaps a beer. Pretty pedestrian stuff.
Tuesday's link: to the newly re-launched team blog that's been taking some of my time: www.whomurderedrobertwone.com. Much, most, credit goes to my co-editors.

I've missed you all. December 21st was the last post...six long weeks back. Without looking at a calendar I can tell you the day: a Sunday. I can tell you it was cold, hardly surprising for the end of December, and there was a brittle sun. I knew Christmas was just a few days away, then New Year's, then an inaugural. Even still I had no idea the size of the events and emotions that were ahead of me.

There's a brief coda, perhaps, to this memory of Scout. Just the other day I opened the mail to find a bill from the vet's office, detailing the charges for her euthanasia. "Euthanasia, $151.00; Catheterization IV, no charge; Ketamine, no charge; Beuthanasia-D 100ml and Mass Cremation; no charge. House call, $80." This in the category of bills you just never think about. Bills you can't imagine paying until they come, and then...well, you can't quite bring yourself to writing out the check. Just not yet.

"Not yet." If there is a more impotent, futile expression in English, I hope someone will share it with me.

"Life's quirky," my friend M told me today, as we sat on my couch and traded stories one to the other. He was being both truthful and kind, as my quirks have, of late, all been in the same direction. A bad run of cards. Although, as when I'm sitting at a Vegas blackjack table, I forget that I'm lucky just to be at the table, rather than focusing on the loss, the loss, the close loss, the push...and the always hoped for next hand sure thing hot cards coming my way.

Work, for instance. In three months time I've gone from boy wonder to wondering if I have a future there. See, while I bet most of you know what I do, few if any understand how controversial it is in-house. I know: hard to believe, looking at it, for such an innocuous thing. But because what I do is different, hasn't been done there before, and is such a personal creation (rather than the result of the giant grey collective blanding machine), it draws arrows. It, and I, am a target.

Now while my advocates and allies were in positions to help, I took the arrows in stride; they helping me up along the way. However very rapidly my allies have left or been moved aside, my adversaries have filled the space, and now I am just a target for arrows, nothing more. The bleeding has left me near dry and sapped my spirit. "Personally I think you've gotten a bum rap," is how a new boss put it to me...my eyes hopefully not popping while I tried not to choke on my tongue. A bum rap. That's how I'm seen? A bum?

Clearly I have taken a major fall. Several, actually. At work, and at home. The grief of Scout's loss did not approach me until very recently, and I can now see neither I nor C are through it yet. Far from it. (And why, it strikes me now, should it be otherwise?) The fall of position and power at work doesn't near the fall of favor and grace I imagine we both are feeling at her passing.

This should be enough. For a sensible man, it would be. But you know me better than that. So yes, I have taken one more fall. A very large one, a very painful one, and one solely of my own making.

A fall of pride, perhaps, and maybe of self-importance. Of selfishness, too, and fantasy at some end. And to be charitable, also of hope, longing, and affection. A fall that has re-educated me on lessons I learned long ago and yet, for some reason, continue to need schooling in. To be as clear as I can without making things worse: I don't regret what I've done (to do so now simply because of heartache would be shallow - and at least I know that's something I'm not) but I am sorry for the hurt it's caused.

As I told C Sunday night, this is not a hurt I will quickly get over. This isn't just a tumble and fall and spring back up. This is a lesson in humility. In being truly humbled - not being falsely modest or hiding one's virtues. Humbled: holding in my hands all my good and bad and recognizing that I am but one of everyone else in being responsible - alone - for all that I am and I do. Seeing once more that we all possess shades and potentials and cruelties and...and love. Love, most, above all else.

And it is love - love that lasts, love that grows, love that endures and renews - that has brought me, humbled, back into my life. And back to this blog. Somehow, I will take these last two or three months of turmoil and create with it something even better. I don't know how or when, but I do know why.

Because I know I continue to love, and always will, and that seems to me the ultimate triumph of living.