Reasons we are reborn as a family: kindness, revenge, and debts.

It’s never too late to apologize.

We were discussing the importance of apologizing when a practitioner told me of one apology he made many years before. 

When he was ten years old, an older relative invited him to see some books. While looking around the shelves, the young boy took a comic. As he grew from a boy to a teenager to a man, he replayed that moment over and over. Ten years ago, he met the daughter of that older relative for the first time in forty years. 

And he admitted his theft. 

I can only imagine the lifting of the weight of guilt his admission brought about. Apologizing can be breathtaking. Only after we apologize can we appreciate the weight of guilt we had been carrying. Will the intense feeling of relief last forever? No. It will likely only linger a few hours, days if we are lucky. 

But the memory of our relief will remain. Maybe we won’t remember exactly what it felt like, but we will not forget how great it was. How relieved, how happy, we had felt. That memory can spur us to apologize again. And again.

Compassion is aspiring to help all beings. Wisdom is . . .

“Beans . . . beans . . . beans . . .”

We heard our white-haired host repeating the above as he walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway, where he disappeared into a room. When he returned to the kitchen, he was holding a can of beans. 

Finding us looking at him, he laughed contagiously and explained that it was his “mind’s way of exercising his body.” As our host opened his coveted can of beans, he explained that he had turned the closet into a backup pantry. And he chuckled again. 

Now, he could have felt embarrassed at having launched into his “beans, beans, beans” soliloquy in front of an audience. 

He could have been dejected about how his memory wasn’t as sharp as it once was. 

He could have gotten angry. 

He was none of these. At some point in time, he decided not to give in to anger, sadness, or wistfulness when faced with declining faculties. He would use humor. What a delightful gift, not only for himself but for all those around him!