The Funhouse Full of Mirrors: When Impact Outweighs Intent
How many times do we hear people say, “my intentions were good?”
I’ve been there. I’m there right now. I feel like I’ve spent months, if not longer, trapped in a funhouse full of mirrors — no matter how hard I desperately tried to escape, I just kept running into the wall trying to find the exit.
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In the wake of conflict, and sometimes, mass destruction, I have found myself looking back, scratching my head, saying just that.
My intentions were good, so what happened? How did it still go so wrong?
Here’s the hard truth: life sucks sometimes. However, I believe that even amidst the rubble that is the complete and utter suckfest, there are little pieces of gold that can be found in the form of lessons. And if these lessons really were made out of gold, some of us would be filthy stinking rich, because sometimes we have to learn that same lesson again and again.
And again.
*Facepalm*
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My most recent, and probably one of my most notable lessons, has been around the difference between intent and impact. I have come to learn that intentions are absolutely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what your intentions were if the impact was ultimately damaging. And sometimes, you find things being reflected back at you that you would rather not see: in yourself, and in others.
A subsequent lesson here is that the line in the sand between right and wrong is not a straight, solid line. It is jagged, and it is immensely blurred.
You can get it right, and still get it wrong. Even with good intentions, you can still screw up royally — and none of us are immune to this reality.
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How many well meaning people are walking around out here, unintentionally wreaking havoc on other people’s lives, and subsequently their own?
Is this what happens when we don’t heal from the things that broke us? How much of the responsibility belongs to us, and how much of it belongs to them? How many people are still unconsciously driven by their experiences and trauma of their childhood and young adulthood?
Why is it that some of us can be accountable for ourselves and own our part, while others are just seemingly incapable? Why do some people take the higher road, or attempt to anyway, while others dodge responsibility at every chance they get? Why can’t some people just apologize? Why do others ultimately get punished for being in pain, pain that was sparked by the negligence of others? For reaching out for help and trying to make sense of the incoherent and incomprehensible, all while being ignored and neglected further? For simply trying to cope and survive? Can you blame these people? Should they blame themselves? It is possible that no one was at “fault?” Where should the line be drawn? Is there a happy medium? Why does the world have to take things that are pure in nature and insidiously twist and distort them into something they aren’t? It’s sick.
I don’t have the answers to these questions — except for that last one, of course.
I guess this must be God’s way of trying to continue helping me get to a place where I am okay with being misunderstood… where I am okay with other people’s perceptions of me, my words, or my actions being distorted, of coming to a place where I am no longer impacted by the way that other people see me, no matter how untrue or inaccurate. Where I can be okay with, and find peace in, letting people be wrong about me. I have a feeling that the places that God is taking me in life will require me to release this level of concern that I have around how I am perceived, as well as the need to please everyone. I may never get the answers I so desperately desire, and quite frankly, deserve. But alas… I guess this is just all part of the beautiful, unpredictable, messy suckfest that is life.
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From here on out, I will never put weight on my intentions again. Instead of asking myself, “Are my intentions good?” I will now ask myself, “What could the impact of this be, for myself and others?”
I feel like if we were all able to start thinking this way, a lot less people would experience pain and suffering at the hands of others. Sure, it won’t be an easy shift — a lot of us are so conditioned to our ways, it can be hard to restructure things — but it is definitely something that I feel is worth attempting, for the greater good of society.
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I can’t for the life of me even begin to say that I understand.
However, I have learned that negating and denying the damage of something, despite the intentions, can actually make it worse, prolong the inevitable, and send you spiraling backward. I am also coming to learn that something can be different, but still very much the same.
Maybe one day I will find out the truth. Maybe one day I will get the apology that I deserve, and I can extend the same. Maybe one day the veil of lies, deception, and distortion will be torn. But, for now, I finally feel like I’ve escaped the funhouse of mirrors.
Sometimes, wisdom is knowing that this is not the hill you want to die on. Other people have no issue putting themselves first, regardless of the impact on me… so I think it’s finally about time I start doing the same. Sometimes in life, objects in the mirror are not what they appear.
And so… I begin again. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall, as long as you rise again.
