'Little by little, one step at a time, we push forward'

On our own two feet

“I wish I could've lived my life without making any wrong turns. But that's impossible. A path like that doesn't exist. We fail. We trip. We get lost. We make mistakes. And little by little, one step at a time, we push forward. It's all we can do. On our own two feet.”

— Natsuki Takaya

Right now, as I write down these words to you, it’s not yet seven o’clock in the evening, but already the sun has started to set and the light has grown dim outside. Even though technically it’s still summer, fall is at our doorstep, waiting to be let in.

Fall has always felt to me like a beginning rather than an ending. (Especially if, like me, you live in the south with our too-short winters — and where, by mid-February, our last chances for snow have usually slipped away for good.)

But I find myself looking forward to the changing of this particular season, this year, more than most; in the span of a few weeks, everyone closest to me will experience milestone birthdays — our little man will turn eleven, our daughter will turn twenty and my wife will turn fifty.

I’m a fan of golf (or at least I once was, most of all when Tiger Woods was at his peak), so if you know the game, you know what it means to “make the turn” — on an 18-hole course, to leave the ninth green and make your way to the tenth tee, a kind of invisible boundary that separates the first and last half of your round.

That’s kinda what right now feels like, for me and the ones I love — in a very real sense, we’re making the turn into a new phase of our lives, and saying goodbye to an old one.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve written to you about regret, as I’ve been reading (and totally absorbed by) Daniel Pink’s 2022 book The Power of Regret. I’ve been learning so, so much, and as I’ve dug deeper into the book’s later chapters, Pink puts words to a feeling I’ve had before, but never could articulate quite like he does.

When we look back at something we’ve done (or haven’t done) that we regret, Pink writes, we tend to oscillate between two poles: being far too harshly critical of ourselves — and not being critical enough.

Self-criticism, he adds, isn’t all bad. It can motivate us. But, if you’re like me, it’s all too easy to fall victim to taking self-criticism too far, and to fall into a mental rut of ruminating on your regrets — a rut that can be hard to get out of. (And, for some people, lasts a lifetime).

The other end of the spectrum, Pink writes, isn’t much better. That’s because having too much self-esteem can lead to denial, and a burying of your own “shadow self,” to borrow a phrase from Carl Jung.

The better approach is somewhere between these two, he adds, an approach he labels “self-compassion”:

Self-compassion emerged in part from [the] recognition that when we stumble or fail, we treat ourselves more harshly than we would ever treat friends, family, or even strangers in the same predicament. That’s counterproductive… Rather than belittling or berating ourselves during moments of frustration and failure, we’re better off extending ourselves the same warmth and understanding we’d offer another person. Self-compassion begins by replacing searing judgment with basic kindness. It doesn’t ignore our screw-ups or neglect our weaknesses. It simply recognizes that “being imperfect, making mistakes, and encountering life difficulties is part of the human experience.” By normalizing negative experiences, we neutralize them. Self-compassion encourages us to take the middle road in handling negative emotions — not suppressing them, but not exaggerating or over-identifying with them either.

That last phrase — “over-identifying with them” — especially caught my eye when I read it. Because I know what that’s like, to see my own flaws and faults so brightly, so strongly, that they block out my own good qualities. Especially when i was younger, I could see what I thought was the bad in me so much more clearly than I could see the good; I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

It’s taken me a long time to understand that that part of my brain was never telling me the full, complete picture of who I was — it was a kind of unreliable narrator that, yes, could see part of the truth. But only a part.

Years ago, I stumbled across a famous quotation by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, one you’ve likely come across at some point in your own reading or education. I’ve always loved it, because it captures the hard part of being human so well:

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

He’s talking about anger here, yes. But substitute the word “anger” for “criticism” or “guilt” or “regret,” and you can see how applicable his idea is. The hardest, hardest thing is to see ourselves clearly, at least that’s what I think Pink is trying to tell us — and seeing our regrets clearly can be a difficult, difficult challenge, because the emotions they stir up in us can be so powerful.

Learning to be compassionate with ourselves — to strike that delicate balance between not beating ourselves up, yet not letting ourselves off the hook either — I’ve come to understand isn’t a quality we’re born with. It’s a skill we can learn and develop over time.

Back in May, Jerry Seinfeld appeared on a podcast called “The Blocks,” hosted by his friend and fellow comedian Neal Brennan. Toward the end of the episode, Brennan shared that he was dating someone who had a child from a previous relationship; the experience, he added, was asking more of him than anyone he’d ever dated before.

Seinfeld acknowledged the difficulty, adding that getting married and having children in his late forties was a stretch he’d never thought he would make. But without difficulty, he added, we tend not to grow.

“The more you struggle, the better you get,” he said. “Struggle is its own reward… the struggle’s the point, that’s where you’re becoming different — in that struggle, you’re becoming different.”

The end result, Seinfeld added, isn’t what matters most: “This is a new thing [this relationship], it’s a bit of a struggle. But you can feel yourself changing, adding, adjusting parts of yourself to do this. That has tremendous value, just that. Even if the whole thing explodes three weeks from now, it doesn’t matter. Was that a waste? No — there’s no waste.”

I love that idea, that approach to life. It’s one I’m beginning to adopt in my own mind — still, though, I’m only just beginning. I’m still learning. It’s still hard to let go of ideas around “success” and “failure,” and to label my own experiences that way — rather than simply as events I can learn from.

But I’m working on it! Always onward, right?

As always, I hope you’ve had a great week and have gotten some great runs in — keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.

Your friend,

— Terrell