I screw up all the time. And 99 percent of the times I screw up, I confess, I fix the problem as quickly as possible, move on, and work to make sure that particular screw-up doesn’t happen again.
Then there’s that other one percent.
(They, too, get fixed, rest assured. But sometimes that one percent just kind of . . . lingers.)
What I remember most is the feeling: It’s like I’m on fire inside. I’m sure it’s a combination of things like adrenaline and other stress chemicals zooming around the body and the brain just thinking and ticking away at the mistake. I’m sure many have felt that feeling. Many, too, feel the little respites that come with sleep, exercise, and other tasks or methods that help a fella temporarily forget that the Big Mistake still lies there, unresolved.
But the feeling always comes back; that fire within. And the respites seem futile, few and far between. Because all you know is the burning.
That’s what I imagine Richard Nixon and his compatriots going through, day after painful day, as I read John Dean’s “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It.” I can practically feel that burning – and this was a burning that amped up and then remained for two years – coming out of every page, out of every conversation. It’s no wonder, during the fight and after the resignation, that his health was shot and he almost died.
If this sounds like sympathy for the man, so be it. He dug his own grave and buried himself to be sure, but it’s inhuman to look and not feel a bit sorry.
Because, to varying degrees, we’ve all been there. Maybe not at the impeachable offense level, but at some level, where we try to bury the burning or escape it, only to feel it coming back.
I wonder to what degree they suffered, though – they had their partners in misery, where they could commiserate and try mightily to explain away the mistakes they made, compounded by the mistakes they made afterward to try to cover up the first mistakes. Still. They had to have their quiet moments, when the only voice in their head was their own, screaming to be heard above the bubbling burning within.
There are days I feel I could write a dissertation on mistakes.
And on that sweet relief that comes when we emerge from the cauldron of burning and know, after all, things are going to be okay.
I have lived my life like this. A strong conscience, one might say. A commitment to self and God that I will be a better person by the end of the day. That I will recognize and fix the mistakes I make as soon as I’m able. Though I am human and let that one percent slip through and give the slow, painful burn for a time to remind me, maybe, what I “miss” the other times I work to make things right.
If anyone tells you they are not familiar with this phenomenon, that they have not felt the burn, that they have not let slip through that one percent, even for a little while, they are lying. We’ve all been in that self-created hell. We’ve all heard the alarms going off. We’ve all been in that spot of doing nothing, or doing only those things that will do all but fix the problem, all but put out the fire.
There are temporary solutions, and the Nixon team seemed to try them all. There was action – lots of it meant to create the illusion for both the public and the self that the problem was being worked and was eventually going to go away.
There was blame and paranoia – the thought that the problem wasn’t really all that much of a problem but was a problem because “the enemies” wanted it to be a problem.
And, on occasion, there was alcohol.
Only one thing fixes the burning permanently: Confession. And the inevitable repercussions, which we are all familiar with based on the burning sins we have committed.
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