Also, a small part of me was--not defensive, but maybe understanding--on Ani's behalf, not on sustance (I'll reiterate that I'm not defending the decision to book or keep Nottoway) but because doing her own thing without explaining herself it is what she does; it's an essential part of her art. The Nottoway case doesn't count as that (her choices affected more than just her), but part of me respected in theory that there wasn't a knee-jerk caving to public opinion. That she should have caved sooner to common sense and reasoned opinion is another matter. But Ani's individualism--her not giving a shit what anyone thinks--is what has always drawn me to her music, and I respect that aspect of her without agreeing with the substance missteps.
Where I'm going with this is that you can't do much in this world without offending people, and the more you do, the more misteps you risk making. And if they're actual misteps, you should be able to apologize and move on. If they're personal choices that other people find threatening, you don't apologize and move on. If you're too busy shitting on people on the internet for their missteps, even once they've apologized, you need a life. You need to get out and do something other than criticizing other people, at the very least so that you can step in it for yourself and see how it works.
And if you're on the criticized end...
Stop waiting for everyone to like you. That's not going to happen. You'll whittle yourself down to nothing trying to remove every offense.
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) January 15, 2014
***You can tell from the early days of this blog that I've spent a lot of time writing about how people have pissed me off (personally and not online), so I'll undertand if you don't accept me as the most legitimate promoter of the concept of letting go, but I want to say, as someone who has had to deal with a lot of people who have pissed me off, I highly recommend letting go.
Even recently I've been knowingly expending too much emotional energy on someone I've since effectively removed from my life. It's so easy: it's initially gratifying to entertain thoughts along the lines of "how does he think he is?" and--something I'm not proud of thinking, about anyone--"I didn't realize anyone could be so dense." I have all sorts of legitimate frustrations in this case, but dwelling on them doesn't actually serve me. It would be more useful to focus on the valuable things that dealing with this guy taught me about myself and about dealing with people.
But I digress; more serious, deep-seated offenses are not the topic of this post. What brought on this post was an incident earlier today--I was at a work-related conference and, in an impromptu hallway conversation with someone we'll be talking to, said something that I later realized came out really wrong (not quite insulting). I got on my work e-mail and sent off a quick apology and clarification. To which he sent out a quick 'it's okay, I get what you meant.' I mean, this was not an incident of global significance, and it was pretty straightforward. But it was just nice to be able to say, "hey, I'm sorry, I meant to qualify something I said, not question something you'd said," and to have someone say "it's okay, got it." We talk to people, we say things that come out wrong... we apologize and move on.
Sometimes the things that come out wrong come from a deeper well of wrong, but I'd like to think we should be able to apologize for and move on from those, too, as long as we mean it.
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