Generosity (Meditations on Turning 40)

This is the year I turn 40, and I've been spending more time than usual reflecting on what I've learned over the years.

It's strange how you know things, and then later you really know them, and realize you didn't know them at all before.

Lately I've been meditating on how often I must relearn the same lessons. There was a time when this would have bothered me, when it would have felt like failure, or at least a lack of progress. But more recently I've begun to recognize it as a benevolence. I may learn the same lessons, but each time I revisit them with greater depth.

There are days when I realize, with aching clarity, that I'm guilty of the same behavior that I recently condemned someone else for. It doesn't matter that, at the time, I recognized I had tendencies towards the same weakness, or that I really did feel affection for the person I was annoyed with. I judged that person, perhaps not harshly, but with a sense of superiority, an idea that I was aware of this flaw in myself and had overcome it. Maybe my criticisms were entirely justified, but those same criticisms were no less justified when directed at me later. I should have been kinder.

That's when it hits home just how much I still have to learn. It's the same old lessons all over again.

Ouch.

It's humbling, and yet it's a sign of how far I've come in life that, instead of condemning myself for this type of thing, I can accept the lesson with a mingling of regret and gratitude for my ability to recognize my failings. I can accept my weaknesses and my strengths equally, which deepens my ability to accept those things in other people.

So, that's one way I've been maturing over the past decade: learning generous acceptance of who I am, and who others are. The first one is necessary for the second. The thought isn't profound; I've thought that as long as I can remember. But I understand it better today than I ever did.