I asked one of my people this week if they were to rate me on a bull shit meter where they would put me. He said that while he feels that I believe what I say, it is hard for him to believe that it is real and that one thing has really stuck out to him that he’s struggled with. The first time we met, I told him that I believe he has always done the best he could and this hasn’t sat well with him. He told me that he knew he “shouldn’t be doing what he was doing” and therefore he wasn’t doing his best. Another person this week struggled similarly, saying he’s failed at being a dad and he’s hurt his kids and should have done better.
Consistently, people struggle to believe they have done the best they could. Their explanations are riddled with should’s, shouldn’t’s(okay bad grammar),and if I would have just’s. Here’s the thing though, doing the best you could doesn’t mean you can’t do better… it means that in that moment, with what you had, with what you knew, you did what you could,what you knew to do. You didn’t know then what you know now.
I’ve been sharing this story a lot lately…it’s one of my shame stories. It’s one of the times in my life I’ve struggled to know I did the best I could for fear that it justified what I did, that it let me off the hook. Something that a lot of my people, including the two above, worry about…we don’t want to be let off the hook. I’m not here to “let you off the hook”, you get to take responsibility for the way your choices affected others. You also get to give yourself grace to know that you weren’t trying to hurt others and if you would have known better you would have done better. So my story…
When I was a senior in high school, I was asked to prom by a very nice guy. Him amd I got along well and he was sweet. I said yes, however, then I learned that someone else planned to ask me, so o went back and told him no. He was part of the “dungeons and dragons crowd” and I knew that my friends would never go with me. While guy number 2 was on the football team, part of the group of guys that my friends hung out with. I wouldn’t be judged for going with him and could go with my friends. In a twist of well deserved karma, he and I had quit talking within 10 minutes of getting in limo to go to dinner. I literally spent years thinking back to this moment frequently and feeling horrible that I did that to guy 1, for being the person I’ve always worked to not be. About 5 or 6 years after that prom I actually sought him out on Facebook and sent a very heartfelt apology. He never wrote back and I don’t blame him, I didn’t write him for me to be let off the hook but because he deserved that apology and it was long overdue. I’ve looked back on the moment and gotten so down on myself, I was ashamed of myself. Here’s the thing though…yeah I wish I would have not done what I did and I was 16. I was being a teenager and like most teens I worried about what people would think about me and I didn’t want to miss out on my friends. If I could go back, I would have absolutely gone with guy 1 and in fact I’m quite certain I would have had a blast. And in that moment, I was doing my best to survive high school, to do what I thought I was supposed to. Stepping away from my own experience as time passed, I was able to see how my choice affected him, how it didn’t line up with who I want to be. If the situation happened today, I wouldnt hesitate to handle it better. I have to give myself grace though and know I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone and I was insecure and hurting and trying to find my way out of that. Continuing to hold this against myself and believing that I’m a bad person because of it would not allow me to love forward. It would paralyze me.
Going back to my person that says he knew he shouldn’t do what he was doing, he also didn’t know any other way to handle his feelings that would work. He was filled with shame and to continue in life, he did what he knew to to cope with this, to distance himself from it. In the process, people he cared about got hurt but that wasn’t his goal and if he knew what else to do, he would have done it. Sure he knew of things that supposedly help but had no reason to believe that they would. He didn’t have models of healthy coping and healing.
Just like I and he didn’t know then what we know now, you didn’t either. You made the best choice you knew to make in the moment to survive.
It’s also important to know the doing the best we can, doesn’t mean doing the best at your best, eith the best skills, so that we aren’t trying to reach an unattainable goal. My best on a day after a good night’s sleep, when things are going well in my life, is not the same as my best when it feels life has thrown everything it can at me. We don’t set out to hurt people we care about, to mess up their life, to screw up our path…we do our best with what we have.
Earlier generations were taught that if they gave their kids affection and attention it would spoil them, they should let their babies cry until the baby learned to “self soothe”. Since then we’ve learned that this can have detrimental effects on kids (and they don’tself soothe, they shit down), as a species we need comfort and connection to survive, to be well adjusted. These same parents blame themselves and feel they failed their children. Why would they have done otherwise though when their doctors were telling them this was the right thing? They only knew what they knew. They look back now and believe that somehow they should have know then what they know now. (See upcoming post on Hindsight Bias)
You are and have always done the best you could with what you had…as you know better, do better. Give yourself grace.