Tesia,

Sadly, I was hoping for maturity in many of the wrong places. Including, as I am regularly reminding, inside myself. That, of course, is the cruelest blow. I would LOVE to think that I’m emotionally mature, and consistent. I am neither.

This is the good news: I’m both aware of what emotional maturity looks like, and also when I ain’t it. Those are, indeed, hopeful signs of emotional maturity, as it were.

So much of this is situational. In some areas, I’m GREAT. Others, I am reduced to a mewling child. If there’s as saving grace, and I most certainly hope there is, it’s that I have a small arbitrator firmly planted on my left shoulder. That tends to point out to me, often right in the middle of showing up like a selfish, self-centered asshole, that I am indeed being one.

Took a great many years to install that noisy little bastard but I’m quite happy he’s there. Don’t like him much, but he does me a good service.

My job is to listen with a sense of humor, back off, and reset. Don’t always, but I try. And therein, as I’ve said elsewhere, is grace. The dignity of effort- as in all things- we try.