“I’m sorry that things got hard.”
That’s like saying “I’m sorry it rained,” when neither of us have any say over the weather. “Sorry” in this context means I feel bad that it rained, with an unspoken corollary: maybe the sun will come out again, and we can all go outside to play.
What my best old ex-friend J ignores, hard AF, is his own agency during the time of which he speaks. Things actually got hard because he made them hard.
These decisions cannot be equated to the vagaries of the weather. They were made by a human being, and many (though not all) were not good decisions.
Of course I regret that we’re no longer friends. It saddens me to this very day, two and a half years later. I try to focus on the good times, as one does.
But I didn’t leave him. He left me, and I’m obliged to protect myself, because those “hard” times he seems to feel happened accidentally, most assuredly did not. They were inflicted, and soul-crushing.
In terms of the successful, principled and profitable beer program I created, it wasn’t merely hard. It proved fatal. None of it needed to play out like it did. It did not have to be this way.
Whatever the nature of the relationship, whether we’re speaking about friendship or love affairs or work, forgiveness is meaningless without accountability, because the absence of accountability enables “rinse and repeat.”
Would mutual forgiveness make us both feel better? Maybe. It might dissipate a modicum of angst or guilt. But meaningful resolution can’t come without the offending party accepting their transgressions, making amends and changing modes of behavior.
I was powerless in the situation, by choice. My only goal was to run a profitable, principled beer program as an employee; not an owner. He who had the power, exercised it. It wasn’t me.
Perhaps I should apologize for standing in the wrong spot when the piano was dropped atop my head, and it’s absolutely true that I’m responsible for cursing aloud a situation in which my fellow employees regularly dropped balls, and were not held accountable by “management” that plain refused to manage them.
Or, I might apologize that craft cocktails and spirits were like dogs that wouldn’t hunt, absorbing a disproportionate level of expense to sales.
However, I can’t apologize for being scapegoated, for the simple reason that it was none of my doing. I can’t apologize for being successful at things I’d already demonstrated an ability to do. Can’t, and won’t.
It’s hard losing friends. I’m generally regarded as some sort of automaton absent human feelings, apart from annoyance and polemical flair. It isn’t true. At the same time, I’m not captive to feelings. I’m capable of standing apart from it and seeing how it is.
J got out from under the Highlands, and he has a new life elsewhere in America. I wish him and his family the best. It was a good decision on his part. I’d like to think that someday, we can be friendly again. I actually believe that he knows what must occur in order to achieve it.
And, I’ll know it when I see it — and I haven’t seen it yet.
