06 Nov A Human Moment
I clicked “schedule” and smiled. The Halloween Leading with Heart post about teenagers leaving candy for the trick-or-treaters behind them was set to go out on Thursday. I checked it off my list and closed my laptop.
The blog was set to publish while I was leading a virtual workshop on quieting the mind. I was explaining how noisy our thoughts can be, how quickly they tilt negative, how fast the inner critic rushes in, and how easily we tumble into if onlys and what ifs.
Once the workshop ended, I shifted from teaching back into the small routines of the day, checking my phone to make sure the weekly email had gone out and opening the page to see it live. And there it was. It was the same post twice, the story finishing and then starting over again.
I felt my stomach drop. That familiar heat behind the ribs. The quick, sharp self-scolding thoughts. How did you miss this? People will think less of you. Maybe they’ll stop reading altogether. The mind is efficient at imagining consequences long before anything actually happens. In a matter of moments, it had turned my mistake into something enormous.
How easily our minds forget softness, especially toward ourselves. I talk often about gentleness and care and had been teaching about it five minutes earlier, yet there I was, startled by my own humanness and ready to make myself pay for it.
I fixed it where I could, then sat there feeling foolish and very much like a person who could use the reminder she had just offered everyone else.
Self-compassion is almost never the first voice in my mind. The first voice is quick and certain, convinced it is keeping me safe by catching every flaw and turning it over and over, as if enough scrutiny could keep me from ever slipping. It has had years of practice.
The gentler voice takes intention. I have to reach for it, the way you steady yourself on a railing when the ground suddenly shifts. It is not automatic. It is chosen. And choosing it takes a moment and a small willingness to be on my own side. To offer myself the words I would offer someone else in the same situation — that being human means getting things wrong sometimes. Let it be small, and meet yourself with kindness here.
For anyone who stumbled over that doubled piece last week, I am sorry. It was a mistake, and I imagine it was annoying to read the same words twice. Thank you for reading anyway, and for the grace that lives in moments like that.
I closed the page. I stood up and let the day continue, which may be the most ordinary and remarkable thing any of us ever get to do after we falter.
We notice.
We wince.
We soften.
And we keep going.