Billy,
I look forward to reading your essay. I have guests staying here from Lake
Tahoe, Australia, and India, so it may take a while before I have time to read
it.
Chris
Christopher P. Hahn, Ph.D.
Constructive Agreement, LLC
<mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]
P.O. Box 39, Bozeman, MT 59771
(406) 522-4143 (406) 556-7116 fax
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2015 9:04 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [RC] Painful Truths Part # 1
This is the first part of a 5-part essay, with an epilogue, a short book in
effect,
which is being distributed nationally. This is the first time that I have
discussed
my family at all, and is done now because of the death of my mother in July
2015.
For the record, nothing I have ever said about any of the people discussed in
the following material is in any way inconsistent with comments made here. But
until
now no such comments were made to anyone outside the family, minus a very
few short references, except to close friends. Anything that takes some
other view is necessarily not my work and should be treated accordingly.
.
The essay is written as a personal narrative, almost as if it was literature.
However, none of it is fiction. The whole effort is factual, including all
details
as best as I could reconstruct them. A good number of episodes could be
verified independently if that was ever necessary.
.
My feeling is that Painful Truths reads well, is interesting as a story, and
could
serve as a model for at least a certain kind of memoir. However, as you
will see, there are a some "explosive" sections of the text that stand on their
own
and possibly may generate widespread interest at large.
.
.
Billy Rojas
Eugene, Oregon
for release: January 1, 2016
====================================
.
.
.
.
Painful Truths
.
By: Billy Rojas
.
.
Truths do not become falsehoods simply because they are painful.
There are times in life when it becomes vital to deal with painful truths,
to look at these truths for what they are, realistically, and try to do
the best thing regardless of the difficulty. All of which calls for the
maximum objectivity you are capable of. Thus, let me proceed
to discuss a set of painful truths and try to do something productive
with them.
.
This concerns personal matters which, however, have much wider
implications. In effect "my story" is also the story of many other people,
not exactly, for that isn't possible, but you will get the idea
as you read further.
.
.
Reflections on the death of a matriarch
.
Mother's death on July 15, 2015, had the effect of forcing unwanted objectivity
upon me. As the end of her life approached I had tried to give her every
possible
benefit of doubt. This was not easy; she was "headstrong" and egotistical.
At times she was irrational -always insisting that she had all the answers
even when she could not possibly have been more wrong.
.
This was a continuation of her mode of thinking from better times in the past,
but intensified -and made more disagreeable by her physical deterioration.
If you have known someone very old, in their 90s, mother was 95, you
are familiar with the scenario.
.
In any case, mother hired a handy-man on a regular basis who worked
on her house making various repairs, etc., usually a week at a time,
once each year, for about decade. This was long enough for Jerry
to recognize the pattern of mother's thought processes, which he summed up
in an comment that could not have been more true: She operated on
the basis of "the logic of the moment."
.
In other words, whatever logic might suit her self interest at a given time,
day by day or even one hour to the next, she made use of. This never had
to be consistent with previous logic, it only had to make sense at the time
she wanted her way about something. And this tendency became far more
pronounced in the last few years of her life.
.
The site, Proactive Change, discusses a 1969 book by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,
“On Death and Dying”, which outlines the process involved and has since
become a standard model for how people die, viz, what they go through
as their last day approaches. Some quotes make this clear: "Facing the reality
of death leads people to feel very angry, resentful, rageful" because it is
'unfair.'
Then, "once the reality of death sets in, the [people] feel overwhelmed,
they become depressed. All resistance is futile." This leads to "anger,
unrealistic bargaining, depression… this is our struggle against “real”
problems
in the outside world, but also against our own inner demons."
.
At length, however, at least in the case of some people, a final stage
is reached "where they are fully aware of impending death, and neither angry
nor depressed about it. They accept it."
.
It must be understood that "dealing with grief is not a linear progression,
but a whole process with chaotic twists and turns. How these "stages"
relate to each other has very little to do with logical thinking. Actually,
the emotional logic of grief, so to speak, is in the jumble of emotions."
It is "a series of frantic moves to re-orient to the world" which,
quite simply, cannot be done successfully.
.
The Wikipedia article about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' book outlines
the five stages of death succinctly. These are:
.
1. Denial -The first reaction is denial. In this stage individuals believe
the diagnosis is somehow mistaken, and cling to a false, preferable reality.
.
2. Anger -When the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue,
[he or she] becomes frustrated, especially at proximate individuals. Certain
psychological responses of a person undergoing this phase would be:
"Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; '"Who is to blame?";
"Why would this happen?".
.
3. Bargaining - The third stage involves the hope that the individual can
avoid
a cause of grief. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made in
exchange for a reformed lifestyle. People facing less serious trauma can
bargain or seek compromise.
.
4. Depression -"I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die
soon, so what's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?" During the
fourth stage, the individual becomes saddened by the mathematical probability
of death. In this state, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and
spend much of the time mournful and sullen
.
5. Acceptance -"It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well
prepare for it."; "Nothing is impossible." In this last stage, individuals
embrace mortality or inevitable future, or that of a loved one, or other
tragic event. People dying may precede the survivors in this state,
which typically comes with a calm, retrospective view for the individual,
and a stable condition of emotions.
..
The point to make is that mother never progressed past stage #1. She was
in denial until almost the end. She was making totally unrealistic plans the
last
day I talked with her, in person, only a few weeks before she died. Even
though, among other things, an "end of life" counselor visited her at one point,
mother invariably treated the concept of death as a hypothetical
that could be deferred indefinitely.
.
Which, of course, and much more will be said about this, was a major reason
why she made so many bad decisions and destroyed her estate, squandering
an inheritance of somewhere between $400,000 and a half million dollars.
This did not happen all at once, it took her about 5 years to liquidate nearly
all
of her assets with nothing to show for it, but this is exactly what she
accomplished. During that time she never admitted even one mistake
on her part -at least not openly.
.
Which brings up the subject of the inability of many people -she was hardly
unique in this respect- to admit making mistakes.
.
On this subject the best place to begin is with a quotation from Thomas Carlyle:
"The greatest of faults... is to be conscious of none." Maybe a better way to
say the same thing is to rephrase it somewhat: "The greatest of mistakes
is to never admit making mistakes."
.
This has been my working premise in life ever since coming across Carlyle's
quote maybe 25 years ago. These is no need whatsoever to pretend that
your judgment is flawless and you never err. The exact opposite is the truth:
You had better be conscious of the unavoidability of making mistakes
and the perpetual need to correct your own mistakes -and to find some
remedy for the consequences of your bad choices.
.
Along with this, a lesson that dates to about 1970 even if, back then,
it was impossible for me to make much use of the truth involved simply
because my understanding of my own life was as limited as it was. That
lesson, learned from Humanistic Psychology, was that it is valuable
to be honest about your feelings, not to be misled by any ideological
or theological worldview you may favor, and to face your inner problems
candidly, clinically, as objectively as it is within you to be.
.
Most people, to judge from experience, simply do not understand this
sort of thing. Or if they do, it is "through a glass darkly," with minimal
clarity, maybe as a rule of thumb or some folk adage. Regardless,
this truth about mistakes is absolutely essential to learn -and to
put into practice in your life.
.
Several valuable quotes culled from Quote Garden or Goodreads
also make the point, they are really worth reading:
.
"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." John Powell.
It goes without saying that unless you admit your mistakes you cannot
begin to learn from them.
.
"Admit your errors before someone else exaggerates them."
Andrew V. Mason
.
“In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them.
Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making
mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down,
we would never walk.”
Robert T. Kiyosaki
.
“I'm afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that defines
our character is how we handle mistakes. If we lie about having made
a mistake, then it can't be corrected and it festers."
Terry Goodkind
.
“We are all flawed, my dear. Every one of us. And believe me,
we've all made mistakes. You've just got to take a good hard look
at yourself, change what needs to be changed, and move on..."
Lauren Myracle
.
.
Mother never had a conception of any such thing -and you simply could not
talk to her rationally about such subjects. She would immediately segue into
defensive mode and start accusing you of making mistakes or of being
disrespectful of her prerogatives as a mother. Each of us, my bother
and two sisters, learned not to bring up such subjects; doing so
would only result in an argument that could not be won.
.
This was only one of many lessons I learned, some very early in life,
that the course of wisdom was to "go along to get along" as far as
mother was concerned, and simply ignore many or most of her preachments
as fundamentally flawed, or worse, and look elsewhere for truth
and for values on which to base my life.
.
Not -the word "not" should be emphasized- because mother wasn't smart.
She could be very smart, its just that she was oblivious to her failings
as a thinking person; it simply never registered that she might be wrong
once she had made up her mind about something. Which, in analyzing
any part of her life story, is one reason it is difficult to try and describe
the kind of person she was. And if anything said here sounds clear and
to the point it is only because I have given questions about her attention
and a good deal of time, seeking to think everything through so that
what I finally do put in writing makes sense and actually explains
parts of her life.
.
I still remember vividly her advice to me, long, long ago, about grandpa,
about how even though she hated him with a passion, she admired his
insistence on "figuring things out," not being content with stereotyped
answers to questions, or commonplaces, or, worst of all, ignorance.
And she made it clear to me as a young boy, that it was grandpa's
cardinal principle that what you learn can never be taken away from
you and will serve you throughout life.
.
There was also what mother said about Jews, and one reason why
she insisted that we lived where we did when the family was starting out,
a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. The student body
of the grammar school I attended was approximately 90% Jewish.
.
As an emigre from Germany mother knew full well that Germans, as a rule,
are smart people. But she also knew that Jews were also very smart and,
as such, should be admired. Her lesson for me, on day in about 1948,
was simply, "you should be smart, like the Jews." Later, the family added
the Japanese to the list of smart people to try and emulate, and -primarily
because she was head of her class in high school but not by much since
her competition was a Polish girl who was equally intelligent- the Poles.
.
Regardless, mother was convinced that she was so smart that she did not
make mistakes. Which was doubly troubling because, as intelligent as she was,
she was not very well informed -about many, many things. Her reading
was always highly selective and she never had a "program" to cultivate
her intelligence to make sure she did not overlook important areas of
knowledge. As a consequence, her "knowledge base" was fundamentally
askew, lop-sided, and full of holes.
.
Mother's reading became increasingly selective as she grew older, focused
almost entirely on the Kennedy family and maybe a few other Democratic
Party heroes, but there was almost nothing else. Her mental life became
a fortress based on "what might have been," a position from which she
judged everyone in the family -except herself. And this was so because,
of course, she never made mistakes. Everyone else did, but not her.
.
Maybe you are beginning to see the problem.
.
Which is only the start of the saga. There were also the many abuses
she meted out to everyone in the family, but these will be discussed
in due course. For now it should be enough to say that there is an
entire literature about abusive parents. While perhaps fathers are more
likely to be the abusers, and even this is uncertain, there have been
an abundance of abusive mothers in the course of time, which is also
to say that feminist belly-aching about how men are always to blame
for every sin known to humanity, is so far from the mark
that it is a travesty.
.
Like the other children in the family, my criticisms of "daddy"
were few indeed; there simply wasn't much to be critical about.
With mother, the criticisms were beyond counting. She knew it
and this also contributed to her defensiveness. Obviously, since
she was always right, everyone else was wrong and must be
defended against. If she hurt others it was their own fault, you see.
.
A favorite quote of mine comes from Buckminster Fuller, who once said
that "we are all damaged children." In our family the damages almost always
were the result of mother's obstinacy, her sometimes viscous temper,
and something approaching megalomania in her disposition.
.
What this may remind you of is the psychology of strict religious people
even though mother was not at all religious in the usual sense. You doubtless
know the type: If even one word in the Bible is wrong the whole edifice
of faith crashes to the ground. There can be no errors in the text, there
can be no mistakes in doctrine, hence admitting as much as one flaw
demolishes the whole system; thus acknowledging error is totally
unacceptable, it is anathema, literally unthinkable.
.
In mother's case the "system" was her ego and repression of all her
limitations -something that surely goes far toward explaining
what she was as a person.
.
Her dysfunctions could, at times, be outweighed by her virtues. On the
last Mother's Day while she was still alive, my brother and I talked about
our lives growing up and the many advantages she made sure each of
the children received. Especially advantages that might be called
"educational." Art lessons for me, dancing lessons for one of my sisters,
etc, continuing through college in the case of the youngest siblings
when her resources allowed it, which was not possible previously.
Even then, while she could not help me with tuition anyplace, grandpa
did that the first year and I paid nearly all of my own ay after that,
mother contributed a class in typing that has been useful to me ever since.
And there were Summer camp expenses she underwrote for each of us
into our high school years, for which we all are thankful.
In other words, no-one is overlooking the good she was capable of doing.
But this does not make her flaws disappear without a trace. Her shortcomings
were monumental, they caused harm to each of us in different ways,
which none of us could escape.
.
In my case there was one difference that the other siblings did not share in.
This was the result of the fact that during my youth, in the final years of
grammar school, a Baptist family became neighbors and, as luck had it,
mother liked them and their kids became friends of mine. In time I was
invited to their church in Chicago and became a committed member.
There were a number of reasons for this but what is most relevant
in this context was getting to know several families in the church.
.
The utter nonsense that Leftists often say about Christian families
has gone a long way, as far as I am concerned, in discrediting Leftism.
This may be more in "looking back" than otherwise, to the years
when I began to question the Democratic Party as well as various
Socialist ideas that had been my ideology during my twenties and
into my thirties, but memory of my Baptist years, until age 19,
was indelible.
.
The Baptist families I knew presented me with an alternative way
of living together as a family, and clearly their examples were
superior to how mother usually conducted her life as sovereign
in the household. I knew, from about age 11 onward, that there
were far better ways to manage a family than she had decided upon.
At least to discuss the Baptist families I knew -through friendships
with boys my age- mutual father/mother respect was how things
were done, and obvious tenderness between parents based
on love for each other. For sure there were gender roles
but the system clearly worked well for all concerned
and it didn't take very long for Baptist values to become
internalized within me.
.
Later I learned that not all Baptist families were such models of
equanimity, and I learned the hard way, but the fact was that
sometimes things can, indeed, work for the best, and that was
my guiding light years later, as a young man starting out in adult life.
.
Religious faith was never a question of rituals to me -ritual is theater,
it is a secondary consideration at most, it is intended to produce
"magical" results that it never does - it was always primarily about
compassion, human relationships, morality in a general sense, and
living up to the example of Christ as much as that might be possible.
In time my horizons expanded greatly to include people of a number
of different faiths, my values became more humanistic in many ways,
but the foundations had been built by my experiences as a Baptist.
.
This gave me 'medical' immunity from all kinds of things that mother
assumed and sometimes demanded. Eventually, I knew, I would be
"out of there" and on my own -her inconsistencies and bad examples
could be disregarded, endured while necessary, because I realized that
soon enough they would all become irrelevant to the "real life"
in my future.
.
Regardless, the legacy of her never being wrong, when, in fact, she was
repeatedly wrong, set enough of a bad example that for some years
as my education progressed, even while living on my own, I had something
of the same problem. Not as bad, but as a tendency. Eventually seeing
the necessity of admitting mistakes and correcting them was the direct result
of several college teachers who made sure that I understood exactly
when I was mistaken about something and needed to learn the lessons
they were teaching, whether about history or science and, while mostly
I picked up on the subject on my own through intensive reading, psychology.
I have no idea how many books and serious articles I have read on
that subject, but surely in the hundreds.
.
In case you are wondering I consider myself to be more of a
neo-Freudian than anything else, but there are a such number of other
strains of psychological thought in the mix that any kind of
"classification" would miss the mark.
.
The issue here, however, is admission of your mistakes. After finally
discovering
Carlyle's statement, all kinds of insights opened up to me. They fit perfectly
with the Buddhist truths I had learned along the way, eventually becoming
my own kind of "Christian-Buddhist" in the early 1970s. And basic to
Buddhism is the maxim that we live in a world of illusion. Few truths are
anything remotely like self-evident. This has to do with limitations of our
sense organs but most germane is the fact that lying is all-pervasive in
society.
>From polite fictions to outright slanders and smears, people seek to
deceive us every day. Not to viscerally understand exactly this is
to set yourself up for a fall. Or one fall after another.
.
It is entirely possible to take this principle too far, of course. Probably
most people have good intentions most of the time. And any kind of
relationship based on trust simply cannot exist unless people are
essentially truthful with one another. Friends can even be defined
as people who are truthful with each other, if not 100% of the time,
pretty close to 99%. Successful marriages also have this character
although male-female dynamics only allow this to go so far; some
things he never understands, some things she never understands.
.
Regardless, we live in a world where illusions are inescapable.
And part of the reason why this is the fact is because many people
cannot admit to being wrong. Or only do so under duress, reluctantly,
and at the first opportunity revert to ego infallibility.
.
Which returns the story to mother. From the outset she was also antagonistic
to criticisms. She never comprehended a principle once expressed
by a writer I am unfamiliar with, Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel, but who said
something worth repeating: "Instead of avoiding criticisms, make criticisms
work for you.”
.
But for that to be possible it is necessary to admit your mistakes. Given
the realities of human nature you cannot possibly catch them all, but
if you try you can catch some of them, maybe a lot of them. Mother
never even tried; it was impossible for her to conceive that any such thing
was something other than a sign of weakness or failure. Thus she added to
and multiplied her mistakes and errors of judgement.
.
Hence, especially during her last years, she became a sort of case study of
what another author who is unknown to me, Umair Haque, once pointed out:
.
"The biggest mistake you can make is listening to people who've given up
on their dreams telling you to give up on yours.”
.
Mother belittled each of us for not living up to her expectations, and it did
not matter that any one of us might nonetheless have never given up in seeking
success. I can't speak for the other siblings but I sure in hell have not given
up
on anything. But mother had given up on everything except being rescued
by at least one of her children -with largesse that would allow her to escape
the effects of her (unadmitted) profligacy, horrible money management,
and incredible irresponsibility.
.
The way she rationalized her failings was to ridicule each of us whenever
any of us might try and explain our hopes and dreams or, more to
the point, something about what we were actually doing to try and
make things happen. Which, and I think this is an objective statement,
applied more to me than any of the others, by far.
.
Her litany was always the same nay-saying, "you'll never do that."
or "who are you trying to fool?" or "your can't achieve anything of the kind."
It became far easier to stop trying to explain anything at all to her;
she invariably interpreted everything through the prism of her own
limitations and failures. What was the point in seeking to persuade
a 90+ year old woman to understand anything at all?
.
This is not to dismiss all nonagenarians. Peter Drucker was active as
a thinker and writer until 92; locally, while he surely had his failings,
some of them inexcusable, University of Oregon emeritus professor
Orville Etter was active in the world of ideas and education until
his early 90s. But mother was not -at all- in this category. Indeed,
she consciously decided to reject any such course of action despite
the fact that she had a new computer at one time, still in her 80s,
that she refused to use after a few half-hearted attempts to learn
the system. By then each of the siblings were computer savvy and
willing to teach her how to proceed, step by step. She simply did not
want to learn anything new. Her communications world was to be
the newspaper, TV, and the telephone, to the end of her life,
and nothing else.
Of course, this protected her from new ideas, hence she could maintain
her psychological defenses unchallenged, but there was something else.
If you are going to learn how to use a computer you have to be prepared
to admit mistakes. There is no way to learn the system without making
innumerable mistakes. Yet she could never admit any such thing.
So she solved the dilemma by retreating further into her insular
world of years ago. And, characteristically, by spending money.
She was an absolute spendthrift. Hence one large screen TV set
after another, as if, in buying the latest television system she was
as up-to-date as anyone gets. And with that, of course, went
viewing packages of 100 channels for $100 per month, money
that, by then, she could not afford.
.
.
Here is a final quote on the subject of mistakes that is relevant here;
the original author is unknown:
.
"Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published
every day, like those of a baseball player."
.
We all need this kind of service. But no-one is in a better position than you
are
to know and acknowledge your errors; it is up to you to do what is necessary
to focus attention on your mistakes. And there is no better way to learn
than self analysis of one's own errors.
.
This said, before going further with the narrative what would be appropriate
now would be a "confession" on my own sins: For the simple reason that
it is necessary to demonstrate an attempt at objectivity. There has already
been significant criticism of mother, and there is more to come, to the
level of the 1978 memoirs of Christina Crawford, adoptive daughter of
film star Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest, a tell-all exposé about the famed
actress who abused her children. But mother's faults were not those of Joan
Crawford -who was an alcoholic bisexual who, from every indication, treated
her children miserably more often than not. Mother scarcely drank alcohol
and was celibate from the time of daddy's death in 1983 until her own demise
in 2015. But there was a pattern of abuse and it was harmful, persistent
over time, and pretty much recognized for what it was by various people
who got to know her in the past. Most of this did not involve me in any way.
About which more will be said soon enough, but my credibility depends
on significant forthrightness and some things must be said -so that no-one
in the future gets some wrong headed idea about mother
or others in the family.
.
As far as my own failings are concerned, third parties can do a far better job
of this than I can, but some things I do recognize as bad mistakes and do not
deny them for one moment. There are additional mistakes that might be reported
but like anyone who has lived a long life, there are too many to list
everything..
However, let me discuss the very worst of them so that you will know that
I am being serious.
.
At the top of the list was allowing my marriage to Sherry to fall apart in
1972-73.
Whether or not I could have saved that marriage is an open question, she did,
after all, contribute significantly to the mess that everything became.
However,
what is crystal clear in retrospect is that divorce was just about inevitable
unless
I had made a number of decisions differently than was the case. The effect has
been a lifetime of regrets. Could I have made different decisions? Also
totally
clear is that the pro-feminist / pro-Leftist ideology we both accepted at the
time
was dysfunctional in general and in detail -not because the Right is right,
which it is not, but because the Left is wrong whatever is true of the Right.
At any rate, at no time have I ever said anything about Sherry that is much
different than these comments and anything purported to be my views
that does not conform to these sentiments is necessarily fraudulent.
.
Next on the list was getting married to Janet, my first wife. With some
exceptions,
my time with her was unhappy and sometimes miserable. "Hell on Earth," to
characterize most of the years with her, would be fairly close. She not only
was unwilling to he honest about her mistakes, she could be violent.
Several times she physically attacked me, fights she never could win,
my response was simply to immobilize her by means of a wrestling hold,
but the experience was always very unpleasant. For her agree to a divorce
it was necessary to "admit" being violent with her, which was false,
but it was a necessary lie, the price to pay to get the divorce at all.
.
Right up there for magnitude of error was accepting Alvin Toffler's offer
to work for him and relocate to New York City in 1975. I can understand
why some people regard the city favorably -if you have oodles of money
you can buy anything. And the delicatessens are world class. But there
isn't much else to say that is positive. The place is overcrowded, noisy,
many neighborhoods are dirty, it is hectic beyond description, street
violence is an ever present danger, and the ethos of the town is close
to the exact opposite of anything I regard as healthy. As well, while
there are rude people everywhere, New York takes the prize. And then
there are the social minorities, especially the limp-wrist crowd; they are
sick people along whatever dimension you choose to measure them.
I lived in Gotham for a little more than half of a year; "Hell on Earth"
would also serve nicely as an epithet for the experience even if, for a
short time, in the first month or two, it seemed that maybe there was
reason for optimism. Not long after that I realized that any such idea
was ludicrous.
.
To cite more recent examples, although there were other blunders from
that period of time, there were a series of mistakes concerning women.
Thinking back, hey!, some things just might have been possible, some
things even seemed probable at the time. But I blew it in several instances
when I had the chance. Robin, a girl in Longview, also a young woman from
Valdosta, more than one co-ed from ASU in Arizona, and some others.
Forever since I have been haunted by "what might have been." Plus there
was Stephanie, but in that instance I actually did everything open to me
to make things happen but circumstances beyond either my control or hers
made any future we might have had together out of the question. Still,
she was the stuff of dreams. I was in my 50s, she was 16. I would have
been her boyfriend, she would have been my old lady.
.
This, of course, is a short list. People who know me personally might add
to it with other items of their choosing. But maybe the point has been made.
In my head is a menu where each choice starts with "I wish I had not done that"
or "how could I have been so stupid?" There are plenty of mistakes in my
memory that, as maybe you can tell, I sometimes re-live and still regret.
Fortunately, there also are some very different memories, too. These are
my recollections of decisions I made for the best but that I recall thinking
about deciding very differently at the time but somehow did not. Some
really terrible mistakes were never made even though they could have been.
Close calls, as it were, that I was able to avoid.
.
The purpose in discussing these matters, to repeat the point, has been to try
and show that the discussion that follows does not rest on any presumption of
not making mistakes. I am embarrassed by my mistakes, I would rather not
discuss them, thank you, but when it is necessary I am the first to admit them.
It would be nice if other people had the same attitude about themselves.
.
Now let us resume the narrative.
.
.
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