Three Words I’m Still Learning

Someone I deeply respect in the field of psychology and helping others recently told me I was a bodhisattva. At first, I thought he had cursed at me. I have been called many things in my life. Some deserved. Some wildly creative. A few probably accurate enough that I chose not to investigate further. But bodhisattva? That was new. I smiled the way you smile when somebody uses a word you absolutely do not understand but you are too old and too educated to admit it. “Thank you,” I said. Which is risky. For all I knew, he had just called me an emotionally unstable water buffalo.

A few years earlier, a rabbi I absolutely love called me a mensch. That one sounded slightly safer. Still, I wasn’t completely sure. Apparently, I have spent much of my adult life being complimented in languages I do not speak. So, because I know how to use Google, I looked them up. 

A bodhisattva, in the Buddhist tradition, is someone committed to awakening and compassion who remains devoted to helping relieve the suffering of others. A mensch is a person of integrity, decency, honor, and character. Class dismissed. You have now learned two words today. You are welcome.

But if I am being truthful, I do not always feel like either one. Especially not lately. The past two years have been hard. Hard on me, yes, but also hard on people I deeply love. There have been mistakes, disappointments, consequences, fear, uncertainty, and more than a few moments when I wished I could rewind the tape and choose differently. 

So when someone calls me a mensch or a bodhisattva, part of me wants to look over my shoulder and ask, “Are you sure you have the right guy?”

Because there are mornings when I wake up and my first spiritual practice is not enlightenment. It is worry. Before my feet hit the floor, my brain has already opened seventeen browser tabs. The past. The future. Money. Family. Work. Things I said. Things I should have said. Things I wish I could unsay. People I disappointed. People I love. Things that may never happen but apparently require a full emergency response meeting in my head at 5:00 in the morning. 

I can revisit a mistake from five years ago with the emotional freshness of something that happened during breakfast. It is a gift. A terrible, completely useless gift.

And this is where those two words sometimes rescue me. Not because I walk around believing I am some enlightened, deeply honorable spiritual figure. Trust me. I have seen me looking for my glasses while they were on my head. We are not quite at enlightenment. They rescue me because they remind me that maybe we are not only the worst things we have done. Maybe we are also what we decide to do next.

That has been one of the hardest things for me to learn. I understand accountability. I understand regret. I certainly understand wanting to go back into the burning building of your past carrying a wrench, a fire extinguisher, three apologies, and a detailed improvement plan.

 I have spent a lot of time mentally returning to places I cannot change, trying to repair things that no longer exist in the form I remember them. At some point, you discover that remorse can teach you. But eventually, if you are not careful, it can also become a room you refuse to leave. And once you are in there... it is hard to get out.

There is another word for the way out. Metanoia. It means a profound change of heart and mind. A transformation in how you see yourself, your life, and the world. 

Look at us. Three vocabulary words. This is practically graduate school. If you would like to thank me, I accept coffee from any reasonably located 7-Eleven.

Metanoia has become one of the words I think about most. Because I used to believe change was an event. A breakthrough. One giant moment when you finally understood everything and emerged from your old life glowing like a person in a pharmaceutical commercial. I have learned it is usually much less dramatic.

Metanoia is waking up tomorrow and trying again. It is apologizing without defending yourself. It is forgiving someone without pretending they did not hurt you. It is forgiving yourself without pretending you did not hurt someone else. It is praying when you feel close to God. And praying when you feel absolutely nothing. It is choosing patience when irritation would be easier. Humility when ego would feel better. Service when nobody is watching. Love when keeping score would be far more satisfying. And sometimes it is simply deciding that today you will not drag yesterday behind you like a broken suitcase.

I wish metanoia were easier. I wish Amazon sold it. I would subscribe. Metanoia Prime. Delivered daily by 7 a.m. “Your transformation is six stops away.” Unfortunately, it does not work that way.

Real change arrives slowly. You practice it. You fail at it. You ask forgiveness. You forgive. You begin again. And somewhere along the way, you become a little less interested in what everybody thinks about you. I am getting better at that. Not perfect. Better.

These days, I care much more about what the people I love experience when they are around me. Does my family feel loved? Do they feel safe? Do they know I am present? Am I becoming more patient? More faithful? More willing to help someone carrying something heavy?

Because perhaps that is the strange beauty of becoming. You do not suddenly become a mensch. You practice being one. You do not become compassionate because somebody calls you a bodhisattva. You choose compassion when you would rather choose yourself. And metanoia is not something you achieve. It is something you live. Again. And again. And again.

So maybe that is enough for me now. To try to be a mensch. To act a little more like a bodhisattva. And to begin and end each day asking for the metanoia necessary to become the person my family needs, the person God is still shaping, and someone capable of helping another human being suffer a little less.

Not famous. Not important. Just useful. Kind. Humble enough to know I still have a long way to go. And grateful enough to realize I am still being given the chance to go there.

Maybe that is the blessing. Not becoming someone new. But finally becoming the person you were supposed to keep becoming all along.