Spilled Milk and Dropped Pride

I once cried when my dad knocked over my glass of milk.

Seriously. I cried – and may have even issued an apology – when my dad accidentally knocked over my glass, spilling its contents when he was reaching for something else on the table at dinnertime.

Another time, I begged someone to reconsider dumping me as a friend when in retrospect, neither one of us were all that great of friends to each other and may have well both benefited from a parting of ways.

And, as an adult, I have had times when I’ve done my best on the job site, had someone be a jerk to me for reasons unrelated to my performance, and I have been the one fretting over whether or not I may get sent home for the day or (worse) fired.

I take too many things too personally. I have too much pride. (For really, it’s prideful to be focusing so much on me, me, me in such situations.)

Well, guess what?I have had enough. I have had enough of shouldering more than my share of the blame for something out of a false sense of humility, out of a misplaced guilt, or due to my own blind spots.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m aiming to keep a right balance here. I’ll ‘fess up to what I have messed up in. I won’t throw someone else under the bus. I will do my level best to quit justifying my wrongs by pointing out how someone else is worse.

But that’s it. I have to put this particular piece of baggage down, and to stop crying over milk spilled by someone else (as well as that spilled by me).