Being Fair to Your Own Life
By H.R. Zimmerer
I am suspicious of any account of a person that contains every mistake and none of the care. I would notice the imbalance immediately if someone handed me that account of a friend. I would ask what had been left out, who was doing the telling, and why a whole life had been reduced to its least flattering evidence. It is harder to recognise the same distortion when the voice presenting it is my own.
An unkind sentence can become familiar enough to sound factual. I always get it wrong. I never finish anything properly. Other people manage. The sentence arrives before the details and begins arranging them. A missed appointment is admitted without difficulty. The ten things remembered on the same day do not seem important enough to mention. An awkward reply receives an evening of examination. The patient conversation that followed is barely entered into the record.
I do not want to replace that account with an equally dishonest one in which I am always wonderful and nothing is ever my responsibility. There is dignity in being able to say that I made a mistake. An apology matters because something real happened. Work improves when I can identify the sentence, calculation or decision that needs changing. But a useful correction is specific. It does not require me to make a permanent character reference out of one difficult afternoon.
There is a considerable difference between saying that I handled something badly and saying that I am incapable of handling anything well. The first leaves me with a task. The second leaves me with a verdict. One can lead to a better attempt; the other can make trying feel faintly ridiculous before I have begun. I want honesty to help me see what is in front of me, not quietly remove every fact that might complicate a harsh conclusion.
The NHS guidance on reframing unhelpful thoughts describes stepping back to examine the evidence and consider other ways of understanding a situation. It also makes room for the fact that a thought cannot always be changed. I appreciate that qualification. Caring for a mind should not become another performance at which I can accuse myself of failing. An upsetting thought arriving is not a moral error. Nor must I be able to make it disappear before I can treat myself with some fairness.
Sometimes the more accurate account is quite modest. I was tired, and I answered too quickly. I need to apologise. I also stayed to help when leaving would have been easier. I completed work that mattered. I noticed someone being left out. None of these facts cancels the others. Together, they describe a person more faithfully than a sentence containing the word always.
I want to include ordinary pleasure in that account, too. A good afternoon is not necessarily evidence that I have neglected something. Laughter does not have to be justified by a finished list. There will nearly always be work left over, especially in a life that includes people who continue to need us. If enjoyment is permitted only after nothing remains undone, I have devised an excellent method of never quite being allowed to live.
This is not a promise that kinder thoughts will repair an unsafe situation, change another person’s behaviour or resolve a practical problem. Those things may require action and support beyond what happens inside a person’s head. I am speaking about the additional judgment we sometimes place on top of a life already asking a great deal. We can address what needs attention without pretending that everything good we have done is irrelevant to the person doing the addressing.
The poem reaches for things that have actually happened: work finished, help given, a mistake put right. I trust those details more than a grand declaration about worth. They give the mind something substantial to set beside its favourite accusation. I do not need to invent a more impressive self. I need to stop leaving so much of the existing one out.
There will be something to learn tomorrow. Almost certainly something to repair, remember, finish or begin again. I would like to meet that work with an accurate account of who is going with me: a person who has made mistakes, yes, and a person who has repeatedly answered the world with care. Both belong in the sentence.
Further reading
- Reframing unhelpful thoughts, NHS Every Mind Matters – guidance on examining a thought with more flexibility rather than demanding constant positivity.
What I Let Stay
The unkind sentence arrives first.
It has the advantage
of having been said before. I reach past it
for something I have actually seen: the work I finished,
the person I helped,
the small mistake I put right
instead of pretending
I had not made it. These things belong in the account. So does the laughter.
So does the ordinary afternoon
I was allowed to enjoy
without earning it first. I cannot make every thought gentle.
But I can stop calling it honesty
when it leaves out
everything I have done with love.
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