Life: (3 of 4) her name means ‘Lamb of God’

And she haunts me. Not in any ‘poltergeist’ or scary-crazy-lady sense. But she was my first love, and my memories of being with her sometimes rush over me so strongly I can smell the fabric softener in her clothes and see those tiny, ever so faint freckles just beneath her eyes. The worst might have been when I was in Ireland this summer. Her father is Irish and so by association I saw a lot of him, and her, in the streets of Galway and felt her spirit in the misty mountains of Joyce’s Country.

I also thought of her when I saw the His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Tucson, at the smaller teaching I got to go to. During the Q & A, one of the questions was: ‘I made a mistake and did something bad to a person very close to me. I did offer an apology, but as far as I know it hasn’t been accepted. Should I do more? If so, what? If not, what should I do?’ It’s kind of nice when someone asks H.H. the Dalai Lama a question that happens to be extremely pertinent to your own life. One of those lucky coincidences… maybe karma.

Anywho… His answer surprised me.

He said, ‘It is wrong for a person to refuse an apology, ever. So now the other person is in the wrong, not you. So long as you understand your mistake and its consequences, as you seem to, it is the other person that is essentially generating bad karma now. For you, just wish that person well, honestly hope for the very best in his or her life.’

What H.H. the Dalai Lama said next was the most shocking part, and surely a joke. He said, ‘If doing nothing or wishing that person well does nothing for, say, five years, then… maybe you can say ‘go to hell’ and just forget about them.’ H.H. the Dalai Lama was speaking through an interpreter, so when he said this in Tibetan, all of the Tibetan speakers (himself included) laughed and laughed. When his translator finally said it in English we all laughed too, but maybe a bit less easily, not knowing for sure if he was kidding.

I can see the wisdom in that joke though. It has been over five years since my first love and I last spoke. Perhaps it is time to just…. I don’t know. In truth I don’t know if I made any real attempt to apologize at the time: I was pretty much an ass, and diluted, and stupid, let alone young. Yet, at the same time, to be honest there is a sense in which I like having those memories with me still, like having a ‘friendly’ ghost there to haunt me. At times, not so much, it is painful. It is one of those areas where I can say, for the most part, that I’m both profoundly confused and, somehow, OK with it at the same time.