Keeping a grip

Over this past couple of weeks someone has let me down very badly. Worse, they have let down some of my closest friends very badly too. I don't want to talk about the detail but there you go - something went very wrong and it makes a difference, someone that I'd considered a friend I maybe won't be able to ever trust or think of that way again. I'll just have to sit with it and let the anger dissolve and see how I see it afterwards. I tend to trust people rather instinctively and you can trust most people most of the time, it isn't often that trust is betrayed. But it happens.

Maybe the saddest part of it is that no matter how painfully we've been let down the one who has lost the most, has been most damaged by what has happened, is the person herself. There was a small problem there and she massively over-reacted in a situation which actually required no particular response at all. Somehow her perspective was completely wrong - well, that is my opinion. I can be pretty hot tempered myself but I seem to have spent most of the last forty years learning the hard way to spot the danger signs, to let go of burning embers that seem to hot to hold, not to add energy to situations that others seem committed to stirring up. If you don't add bad energy there is always a way through problems in relationships.

In this case it all feels like some straw broke a proverbial camel's back, an earthquake was waiting to happen and it only took the breeze from the wings of a butterfly to unleash the cataclysm and bring the dam toppling down. Then a deluge of stuff came pouring through the breach, no hope of any repair there I think, too much said and done, things broken. It isn't so much a case of anger, that fades after a while, it is the destruction of trust involved, you could just never work on the assumption that it wouldn't happen again. Actually she was in a situation that was a real dharma door for her, that contained the seeds of many things that might have carried her through several of the issues I sensed crowding into her life. But she pressed the 'detonate' button. Big, big mistake.

It surprises me how often people seem to stamp their foot, throw in their hand and stalk away from life and they apparently get away with it. But they don't, do they? You can't duck reality. You might apparently get away with throwing your toys out of your pram and if you are really deluded you might persuade yourself for a season that it was all justified and it doesn't matter. But not for long, and you can never lure that famous moving finger back to cancel even half a line even if you want to with all your heart. Getting and keeping a grip is crucial.