Strange places , strange feelings
Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
I was in Northampton today for a union meeting. We have thrown ourselves into our technological world and have members join us via teleconferencing. I am always reminded by such meetings that it only takes a few people to create change. I am also reminded by the number of members requiring assistance how vital a role a union plays in attempting to ensure fair play.
Maybe it was because it was such an energising meeting that when I left and walked to the car park I began to feel strange. Strange not in sickness but alien to the town. I don’t know the town particularly well though I was somewhat surprised by the feeling.
Do you ever find yourself in a place and you wonder what is like to live there? If like me you then find yourself observing the people and wondering how you would fit in if you lived here. I think I was struggling to see myself fitting in yet this the town in which my paternal grandfather was born and indeed his father before him. I heard Northampton mentioned many times as a child and in recent years I have found myself in it.
Is it that I am wondering if there is a Jackson walking past me to who I may be related? Perhaps I feel there should be a connection to the town yet I feel only a stranger.
Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
I have made lists over the years. Actually, I didn’t start making lists until I moved away from the town in which I had spent almost all of my life. I was a student in Galway when, perhaps due to the distance and the reflection it induced, I began to write a list of all the people who had been a part of my life since consciousness began. I must have had a need to feel I belonged and in some sense, the names on the list gave me a sense of belonging.
These days I have no need to write as I carry the names in my head.
Of course I have thought of those I have harmed in my life and at times life has presented a later opportunity to apologise. Some I may never meet others I don’t know who they are though from time to time I have had conversations in my head with them in which I have apologised.
Further than an apology, I have not made any direct amends other than change my behaviour and in that sense honour the person I may have harmed.
Perhaps one day when we all see our lives played out in the cinemas of heaven they will see that due to them I changed my ways.
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