Dear family, both chosen and blood, and people who are not my chosen or blood family but for some reason I have harmed and are reading this, and people who are not my chosen or blood family who I think have hurt me:
This post comes with the usual warnings and hedges. (If you have already read them and choose to ignore them, skip down past the numbered items.)
I don’t really understand how Substack works. Therefore, I do not know what you are seeing when you read this. I suspect that it would be possible for me to know how Substack works if I could force myself to focus on it. And if I understood how Substack works, I could customize it to do what I want. However, so far I have not been able to make myself do that.
I often have trouble devoting the “right” focus to what I am doing. Sometimes my focus is lost quickly, often when I am in the middle of doing something, so what I am publishing is not current.
I am not sure that my “winning” at Substack is good for me or you. In this context, winning means getting new subscribers to my “newsletters” and getting those subscribers to download and read my “newsletters.”
Substack is not the only online platform that supports subscription newsletters. The others may be a better fit for me but I needed to pick one, at least to start, and this is the one that I picked.
A subscription newsletter may not be the best use of my time and talents but, again, it is the one that I picked.
As some of you know, I do not observe most Jewish holidays. However, I am planning on observing one roughly twelve hours from when I am writing this. It is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is, according to Jewish tradition, the time when G-d closes the book on the Book of Life until the following year. Consulting the Book of Life, G-d decides who will live and who will die. I suppose it is also when G-d decides who suffers and who does not.
I am not asking G-d to forgive me. I don’t believe in G-d, and asking something I don’t believe in to forgive me seems silly. Of course, if G-d exists, and if G-d will punish me for not asking forgiveness, then I have made a huge mistake. However, it is a mistake I have made since I was eleven years old, over fifty-five years ago. It follows, sort of, from the first moral training I ever received, which was from Sherwin Wine at that time. He founded a branch of Judaism that I am not sure still exists: Humanistic Judaism. He believed that people do good not because G-d tells them to but because they want to be good. He thought that observing Jewish holidays was a reminder to do good. I thought that was silly.
As is often the case, over the years the wisdom of early moral lessons became clearer to me.
For years, I observed Yom Kippur by asking people, through e-mail and in person, to forgive me. Some of you may have gotten such an e-mail from me. So let me get that out of the way. If, over the last year, I have harmed you either by action or inaction, please forgive me. Tell me what I did or did not do, and I will try to do better.
Recently, I have tried to do something even harder for me: I have tried to forgive those who have harmed me. That is harder for me because I am easily hurt and because, while my long- and short-term memory is shot, I tend to hold grudges for a long time. Some people may have hurt me because they like hurting people. I suspect that not many such people want to hurt me. Other people hurt me because they do not care if they hurt me or they believe that what they want/need is more important than what I want/need. Other people may want to hurt me because I have hurt them and they want revenge, or perhaps they think it is justice. Some people have tried to help me and instead hurt me, because I am, as I have noted, easy to hurt and hard to help. For whatever reason I am holding a grudge, I will try to let it go.
As I noted, I don’t believe in G-d but I do believe in you—although even that has been challenged this year. This is the year of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, increasingly, the things I read, see and hear may be created by a machine. I often suspect I am interacting with what is often called a “bot.”
If this resonated with you, please leave a comment. And if it did not resonate with you and you think I am simply wrong, please leave a comment. I need to read these comments.
I am normally ambivalent about asking you to share my newsletters. In this case I am not. If you know anyone I may have hurt, either by action or inaction, please share this with them.
If you know anyone who wants to hurt me, or who you know I think has hurt me, please share this with them.
If you know anyone who has tried to help me, and I did not show appreciation or, worse, acted offended, please share this with them.
As always, much love,
Fred
Fred, thank you for the thoughtful post. I will add to the consistent theme here: you have done nothing to offend or harm me and I hope I have not offended or harmed you.
Coincidentally, today I finished listening to an audiobook “The Book of Charlie” by David Von Drehle. It is about life lessons from his neighbor Charlie who lived to age 109 and ends with the following philosophy of life, which the author found in Charlie’s notes after he passed. Your post is certainly consistent with #7;
1) think freely
2) practice patience
3) smile often
4) savor special moments
5) make and keep friends
6) tell loved ones how you feel
7) forgive and seek forgiveness
8) feel deeply
9) observe miracles, make them happen
10) cry when you need to
11) be soft sometimes
12) make mistakes and learn from them
13) do the right thing
14) work hard
15) spread joy
16) take a chance
17) enjoy wonder
Fred, you have not done anything that has hurt me. You have often been a blessing to me by provoking me to examine my beliefs and actions. I hope I have not done anything to hurt you. If I have, please forgive me.