I Don't Need No Stinkin' Lessons...Er...OK. Maybe I Do.

December 17: Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?


Ha! Lessons.

Do you want to know what I hate? OK, perhaps "hate" is too strong. Let's try this...

Do you want to know what frustrates the hell outta me?

Learning a lesson so thoroughly well, perhaps (usually) through some kind of painful process, and then clicking along about my life, happy that I've learned the lesson and that I won't ever have to go back THERE again, and then one day waking up and realizing, "Shit! I did it again, didn't I?"

And by "IT" I mean reverting back to an old behavior of which I thought I'd disposed.

My favorite lesson I've learned to date is just how important transparency is in a relationship. I talk about it...A LOT. I probably ought to create a blog tag just for transparency. It'd probably be at the top of my tag cloud...or possibly just behind "ohmygawdIlovewine".

I love it because wow! What a difference it's made in my life and my relationships. Seriously. Dramatic differences.

But! Just because I toot the transparency horn everywhere I go (better than tooting everywhere I go just generally...but as I get older, that's much harder to control so, you know, there's that), doesn't mean I'm immune to letting it slide. Rarely, I'll admit. But there are times when I go wait...what?

No other time was it so painfully clear that I'd forsaken transparency for...what? Fear? Yes. Fear. That seems likely...than the night I sat across from Cripes at Devon's Pub and we talked about last year.

For the first time, I was listening - really listening - to his perspective on the events leading up to our falling out of favor with one another and I had to stop and go whoa. Was that really me? Was I really that opaque?

Turns out...yes. *sigh* I really was that unclear.

Crap.

So, I begin again. Not from the very beginning (praise be to jeebus) because really...I don't even like that song (Do a deer, a female deer; re, a drop of golden sun). But from somewhere in the middle of Confidence in Me.




And that's a lesson well learned.