Redemption

A friend was wracked with guilt. Bearing what she saw as an irrevocable stain, she asked whether I thought redemption is possible.

I told her something truthful (I'm not a believer in expedient falsehoods, unless they're truly insignificant), but I left off the footnotes. There's a trade-off. Without footnotes, it's perilously easy to misunderstand. With them, you lose a lot of the power (to induce a shift of perspective). I opted for power, and she found my reply effective.

You probably wouldn't, though. Unless there are juicy footnotes to dig into, you'd need to be that specific person in that specific predicament at that specific place and time, or else it comes off as empty banality (this is why one must always bake fresh). So, for you, a version with footnotes:

Every Moment Starts Fresh<sup>1 2 3 4

1</sup> - ...unless you tell yourself it doesn't.

That sounds like a mild conceit, and so it is, the first time you tell yourself. But by the ten thousandth or forty millionth telling, you'll be in a hypnotic trance so deep that it feels like inescapable reality. If that strikes you as frightfully daft, I regret to inform you that you're soaking in it.

In fact, this explains my friend's entire predicament. She was well into the millions.

² - ....except for familiarity and tolerance, which are permanently altered.

I'm told that first-time murderers have a hard time pulling the trigger, and are haunted for a while by the experience. The second time, not so much. This applies to all sorts of misbehavior. Politicians talk about the Overton window; the boundary of where a society defines "beyond the pale" (it's a metaphor for "framing"). This window, as you've lately observed, can be moved (i.e. reframed).

We all have our personal Overton windows. So while every moment starts fresh, certain patterns become more familiar, less unthinkble, and thus more easily engrained. But this is certainly not to say you have no choice!

³ - …but there are ripples to consider. 

I wrote here:

"Your every action - every word, every gesture - shapes the future. You are the god-like prime mover of all that comes after. You are the Ancestor. You create posterity's ripples."

You can't undo the ripples. But you can add new ones that harmonize more benignly with the extant ones, making the whole a bit more beautiful. You can season the ripples, regardless of their origin (we contribute collaboratively; no ripple bears an individual signature, though we might hypnotize ourselves into imagining otherwise).

Ripples aren't ravenous piranha bent on nibbling you to death. That preoccupation is just more self-hypnosis. And ripples are neither good nor bad. They're agnostic. They're your playpen. Another term for the ripples is "The World", which is an ongoing collaborative art project. In any moment you may contribute empathically, carefully, heartfully. Or not! It's up to you! Guilt is useful insofar as it helps steer your preference. That’s what it’s for. That’s all it’s for.

In terms of the nuts and bolts of ripple management, it's more a matter of attitude/perspective than of any specific recipe of "moves". Consider Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning: ebullient, exultant, and ecstatic. From that framing, everything is possible. Having reframed, the mechanics of redemption take care of themselves.

Obsessive guilt, while better than gleeful delight at one’s misbehavior (or fear of apprehension or reprisal), will not beautify any ripples.

⁴ - "Freshness" is an invitation, not an assessment.

It's not that every moment leaves you fresh, as a magically cleansed end point, or a rebooted operating system. It's that every moment starts fresh, presenting boundless opportunity for contribution. "Redemption" and "invitation" are inseparable. One's invitation is never revoked.^*

^* - Someone like Bernie Maddoff might disagree about revoked invitations. But only if one imagines we get to choose our channel of contribution - and demand certain results. While it all may serendipitously hew to expectation, none of us - including those with snowy clean records - has such control. But opportunities for contribution remain bountiful come what may^*. It's all in the framing.

^* - Peeing into the wind contributes. Mildly brightening a stranger’s day contributes. Again: every action - every word, every gesture, seen or not, successful or not - shapes the future.

See also my theology, cosmology, thoughts on good and evil (and more thoughts), and all postings tagged "ethics/morality".