David McElroy

Feelings from the past can often lie waiting for us to find. Sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. Friday morning, the past showed up at my house in the form of a lilac-colored envelope that a woman had sealed for me 19 years ago.

I knew the handwriting before I even read her name.

I started some renovations in my house last year and I moved boxes around that hadn’t been touched for a very long time. I had planned to go through the boxes, but I never did. Friday morning, an envelope atop one of those boxes caught my eye. I absentmindedly picked it up. It was unopened, but there was a handwritten note on the outside.

“Dear David,” the note started.

It was dated June 12, 2006. Even without seeing the confident signature and the flourishes at the end of the loving note on the outside of the envelope, I knew who it was from. I haven’t talked to her for many years, but she and I once loved each other very much. We almost got married. There had been regret for both of us when things were over — and that regret was never resolved.

What did this unopened old card say on the inside? It made my heart do flip flops as I looked at her handwriting and I wondered what it might say.

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I spent much of my life trying to correct the rest of the world.

I knew the facts. I knew what was rational. I was absolutely certain of myself. I was arrogant enough to believe I knew what other people ought to believe. How they ought to live. What they ought to say. And I would argue with almost anybody, especially online. All of these idiotic beliefs kept me miserable.

I had to learn a humbling lesson. Nobody wanted me to correct him or her. Even if I was right, my arrogant attitude and insistence on “fixing” others made me wrong. It took me years to learn that.

I see plenty of people around me today who still haven’t learned this lesson — and that is often keeping them unhappy, arrogant and bitter, even if they can’t admit it to themselves.

So I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned. You can accept this lesson or you can ignore it. That’s up to you. Ready?

Let people be wrong.

Don’t argue with them. Don’t try to prove you’re right. Don’t try to prove they’re wrong. You have nothing to gain by arguing. Even if the other person is objectively wrong, so what? Are you really making a difference now if you’re going around correcting people? How’s that working out for you?

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“They say if you scratch a cynic, you’ll find a disappointed idealist. And I would admit that somewhere underneath all this there’s a little flicker of a flame of idealism that would love to see it all — whoosh! — change. But it can’t happen that way.”
— Comedian George Carlin

I want to give up on this world. I want to give up on the human race. I go back and forth between rage and numbness about what I see from my fellow human beings.

I’m angry at the willful ignorance and delusion. I’m angry at the rampant dishonesty. I’m numb that people allow themselves to believe hateful idiocy — and I know there’s nothing I can do about it. So I swing wildly between two competing parts of my mind.

One part of me still clings to the belief that life can be beautiful. That love is real. That truth matters. That something sacred still flickers in this broken world. This part of me sees the way things ought to be and aches for those things. It dreams of deep, soul-level connection. Of a home where peace lives. Of a life anchored in what’s true and good and lasting.

But there’s another part of me that rolls its eyes and scoffs. That part has been hurt more times than I care to count. It remembers the idiocy, the lies and the self-deception of the masses who have given in to blindly following their passions and hatreds. That part of me sees a world that often mocks what’s pure and rewards what’s evil. And that part of my mind whispers to me, “You’re a fool if you keep believing!”

These two parts of me wrestle every day. The idealist still believes in love. The cynic keeps pointing to the scars and the new wounds.

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