Reflection

It never fails.

Both of my jobs involve teaching and counseling with people. Of course, what I hope is that the people I work with come away from our conversations with some new insight or information that will be valuable for them. Or at least a reminder of something they'll hear differently this time and maybe remember.

What I know is that I usually do.

I recently spoke with a 20-year-old man who expressed bewilderment that a good woman had fallen in love with him. He had, he said, been doing drugs since he was 13. But he'd met her during his longest stretch of sobriety, when all sorts of things in his life were falling into place. Then he used again and screwed it all up.

What could she possibly have seen in him? he wondered.

I found myself saying something like this: It's so easy to see the "bad" things we do or think or say as reflecting our "real" selves. It's so hard to see that the good things reflect us as well, and maybe even more so. I'm not sure why our self-perception can get so scallywompus. But it can and often does.

I need to remember that.