Wanzology

F.A.P.T. (Forgiveness, Acceptance , Patience, Tolerance)

For auld lang syne my friend, for auld lang syne! Should old acquaintance be forgot and remember auld lang syne!! That's an oldie but a goodie on this last day of 2024. How ya doing? What's going on? I am The Wanz and you are in WANZOLOGY, the last episode of 2024. I hope that this year has taught you as many things as was taught to me and that you actually learned some of those things. I tried, I really tried, but I can't say. Jury is still out and life is still challenging and I guess that's a good thing because if life wasn't challenging would we really want to do all this stuff anyway? All the things that we do, all the mayhem and chaos we cause ourselves? I have no idea whether we would or not, but I do know that a new day is a new opportunity and if you wake up and all five senses work, you too have a new opportunity.

This episode on this last day of 2024 is something I just thought up and I wanted to speak on. When I got into recovery, principles were what I based almost everything on because I was told, principles don't change feelings can change and tastes can change opinions can change, but principles, values, those kinds of things should never change. Going into this new year for myself, based on what I've been through this year, there are four things that I am going to work on emphasizing in the coming year. And I tried to think of a clever acronym to, you know, make it easy to remember, but all I could think of was F.A.P.T. F-A-P-T. ‘F’ for forgiveness, ‘A’ for acceptance, ‘P’ for patience and ‘T’ for tolerance.

Fact. If I can increase my understanding or expand those four things into more places in my life, more relationships with other people, I like my chances. But first I have to figure out how and when to extend these things to myself. It has been said, one cannot transmit something they do not have. Now, it's sort of easy to forgive someone else. You know, if they step on your foot or they bump into you, they say, excuse me, and you, you've usually you just forgive them and don't worry about it and just move on. And then there are those who unintentionally totally dog you out or hurt your feelings and you can forgive them. And then there are those who intentionally hurt you and what I've learned is that being able to forgive someone else is nowhere close to as important as being able to forgive your-self (two words). You are the only ‘you’ you have, and you're always going to be with you. Like Buckaroo Banzai always said, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

So, before anything happens with anybody else, things have to happen with you on the inside, and being that you're a human, I guarantee you, you are not always going to be successful, and that's okay, that's okay. As a human, your job is to try. Your job is to put forth as deep and honest and strong an effort as you can. Be it making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, driving a car, helping someone cross the street, grocery shopping, it doesn't matter what it is. You have to put yourself out there. And if you fail, which inevitably you will, you have to be able to say, “That's okay, I'm only human.”, and it's so much easier said than done.

Sometimes, this year I have hurt more than a few people, deeply and I've gone back to each and every one of them, not only to apologize, but to make amends. And the difference between an apology and amends to me means, not only am I sorry, but I want to know what I can do to make it right, to repair the damage I've done. You can say, I'm sorry, but then if you go farther past that and say, what can I do to make this right? Then you're making an amends. I'm in the process of making a living amends right now because I hurt someone. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do to codify this amends, but I know that the dialogue is there for us to discuss what an amends is going to look and feel like, but the harder part was forgiving myself for making a mistake in the first place.

So I'm working on that too. What did I do? What did my actions do? My and my actions alone created ripples and those ripples cause damage. So I have to understand inside what I did so that I can learn how not to do that same thing again and if I don't try to learn that lesson, I'm not really invested in forgiving myself. If I just say, “Oh, well, that's too bad. That's just the way I am…”, I'm just denying that I had anything to do with making the ripples in the first place.

So forgiveness is key. Not only other people, but of yourself especially. The second key, acceptance. Now acceptance doesn't mean you like or dislike what has happened. It means that you understand that something has happened and want to decide how to react or respond, like the weather. You can't change the weather, right? If it's sunny and you want it to be cloudy and rainy so it can water your grass or your flowers or whatever, or you want it to snow in the mountains so you can go skiing, you can't change the weather, so you have to accept whatever is dealt to you that day, that time. It's not a matter of if you can accept something, it's how you accept it. You can either have a good attitude about it, some people call it a constructive attitude, “Well, it could be worse.”. Yeah, you could say that, but I wouldn’t, because my experience has been the universe is always listening and when I've said, “Oh, it could be worse.”, that's been the universe's cue to go, “Okay. Let's make it worse just to see!!”, but how do you accept things that happen not only outside of yourself, but also inside of yourself? Self-acceptance. You are who you are. Now, you can be trying to change habits, I don't know, maybe, you know it's New Year’s, people make these resolutions to lose weight or to quit smoking or to quit drinking or to quit whoring and to give up porn or become vegan or whatever. People make changes at the beginning of the year. But you have to accept what those changes mean to you. You have to be self-accepting in order for them to actually take hold and work. Now if you can accept the things inside of yourself, that makes it a little easier to accept things from other people that happen outside of yourself, at least that's my experience.

So the third thing, ‘P’, patience. Patience is one of the hardest things to recognize because once you recognize or you ask for it, you don't realize that you're already in it. Let's say you have a friend who totally dogged you out on social media. Now you could go to that person and confront them about it, or you could wait to see if they noticed that they actually did something wrong, or they did something that was not right, which is different from wrong. You could wait and wait and wait but all that time, you are also, inside of yourself, being patient. There's an action that's probably going to happen. You don't know what it is yet. You haven't decided. You're waiting. Well, what do you do while you're waiting? It's a very good question. A friend of mine tells me, “Life is what happens while we're busy making decisions.”, and sometimes it takes a little bit to decide one thing or another. The thing is, is that life is still going forwards. Time never goes backwards, so what do you do while you're waiting for something to happen? How do you occupy yourself in the meantime? Which for me, that's the biggest challenge, what do I do in the meantime, while I'm waiting? You have to have patience, because if you make your move too soon, doing anything, for yourself, to yourself, for someone else, to someone else, the wrong decision has consequences and you have to be ready to accept those consequences, whether they're good or bad. Patience. “The waiting is the hardest part”, as Tom Petty put it. “Every day, see one more yard. You take it on faith, take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part.”
Totally true facts right there. And lastly, is T.

Tolerance. Now tolerance is very interesting because you can withstand a lot of things, that's how you got this far. You can withstand a lot of good things, bad things, and things that happen in between. But can you tolerate things from other people? Other people's ripples. Can you tolerate those things that come from other people to you? Can you tolerate the things inside of you that affect other people? What are you gonna tolerate? What are you willing to put up with? How much grace are you willing to give yourself? Because, I mean, if you're a perfectionist, and every mistake is tragic that doesn't show very much tolerance for being human. If someone outside of you, if you see someone break something, or trip over something, or make a mistake, do you make fun of them? That's not very tolerant. Everybody is doing exactly what you're doing, trying to live. But if you can tolerate yourself making mistakes, as well as being successful, can you tolerate someone else making a mistake as well as being successful? Well, how do you do that? I haven't got the answer for you. I know what the answer is for me. Having tolerance for other people is challenging, because as you may have experienced, some people are just annoying. They don't mean to be. They are who they are. Can you tolerate the way that they are? I'm sure you can. Some people you can tolerate for long periods of time, some, not so much. But whatever it is that you tolerate on the outside, make sure that you're also tolerating it from your-self (two words). Make sure you're tolerant for and of your-self (two words), because if you can't tolerate your own behavior, what makes you think somebody else is going to tolerate it? What makes you think that someone is going to tolerate you being ‘you’ just because? You have to be tolerant first of yourself. In fact, all of these things, F A P T, forgiveness, acceptance, patience, tolerance. These are things that you have to exercise and practice on your-self (two words), to benefit yourself (one word).

The one word, that's what people see. People see yourself (one word), but inside, it's your-self. Want to be a better human? ‘FAPT’. Practice FAPT. F A P T. Forgiveness, acceptance, patience, tolerance. Practice it on yourself and then practice it with other people. Not necessarily on other people, although you could, but with other people. You'd be surprised when you step back and you're more tolerant of someone who's acting a fool, instead of just berating them or insulting them. You'll be surprised what happens when you are patient with someone else after they've screwed up. You're showing them encouragement and being patient to see if they can turn their things around and become more successful at whatever they're doing. See how that makes you feel when you do that.

You can be more accepting of your-self, meaning you need to be more aware of how you conduct yourself (one word, and being accepting of it. You can't just say, “This is the way I am!”, It doesn't work like that because then you have to ask yourself, “Why are you the way that you are and what effect does that have on other people?”, ‘cause you don't exist in a vacuum. You're part of everyone else's life as much as they're a part of yours, you see. But if you can accept all of you, great, but don't overlook those things that are how you say detrimental to your relationships with other people. Unacceptable means I can't be selfish like this and only think of myself. No one will ever think of me if I'm only thinking of me and never thinking about them. Conversely, if you're thinking of other people more than you're thinking of yourself, then all you're doing is kind of screwing yourself.

Forgiveness, acceptance, patience, tolerance. I believe in 2025 these will be the keys to having a more enjoyable life for me. Your results may vary, but I encourage you to understand what each of these words means to and for you. If you can practice them on yourself and then take what you've learned and project that on to other people. No matter where your life is right now, I guarantee you, you will see your life become different. May not be better, may not be worse, but I think it will be different.

So FAPT it up, baby, F-A-P-T. FAPT it up!!
Forgiveness.
Acceptance.
Patience.
Tolerance.

Let's go into the new year practicing on ourselves and show others how to be a better human being by making yourself (one word), a better human being. Let's try that, shall we? Let's go forth and kick ass in 2025!! I wish you and yours only the best. May we all be blessed at being successful human beings and keep breathing, baby. That's all we really have to do. Then we have an opportunity.

Thanks for tuning in. Take good care of yourselves. Here comes 2025.
Let's go get it. Let's get some!!!
Peace, I'm out!