REPAYING DEBT OF GRATITUDE

Do you know the feeling when you are in the situation where you feel yourself so small and so wrong because of the blames that being thrown to you, yet you cannot speak much because you were very careful to say something that may be offensive?  Besides your reasons are seem not going to be right and that your sorry is not making it.  When someone, not from your family, is superior whom you owe “debt of gratitude” is reprimanding you, you will really feel so little and down.  You will try so hard not to speak no matter how right you believe but instead be polite and so diplomatic out of respect.  The blames for the wrong you did and for the pain you caused are what make you feel guilty, humble, ashamed and regretful for.  You tried to be humble because you have debt of gratitude.  You caused distress and failed someone, and maybe disgraced the person although they were not what you intended, but your arguments and apology are unaccepted and going nowhere, that is why you feel embarrassed and feel guilty about it.  Actually, you don’t care about the embarrassment and self-pity but instead you are more concerns about the situation of the person that perhaps you put in bad light to his/her peers.

Debt of gratitude is no compensation, it is just always here and there.  Whether you match it with great price, the debt of gratitude will be consider again and again in times even you thought you paid.  Twenty years may have passed when this situation happened to me yet it still affects me.  I was so ashamed and felt useless to myself scolded by the person who helped me.  I failed the person and perhaps I put him/her in an unpleasant situation, and for that I am feeling guilty until now.  That person has all the rights to feel angry because helping me to land in a job seemed to be disregarded.  Being in a higher position in the company, that person has prerogative to get whoever he/she wants to help.  Actually, it was big debt of gratitude to think that I came from a company that laid-off me due to labor union, which made me difficult to find another job, and yet here’s the person who gave me job.

So this is what happened: I was in a group that I did not think will oppose against that person.  My intention was pure and none in my hindsight that it was not right, and so how dismayed I was when I was upbraided that I was so wrong.  But honestly I never thought I did wrong.  That person may be right or wrong or I may be wrong or right or whatever.  Maybe I was just not smart enough to know the possible implications of my act ahead of time.  It was just so hurtful to be called ungrateful.  It was so belittling.  It was demeaning feeling when you were in that situation where you cannot do anything but to accept all the rants to happen.  Yes, you had fault but you did not to mean it.  You understand that everything you have heard is true but you believed you did not do it the way he/she was saying it.  Much more you did not want to hurt and disobey a person because all the while you thought you never hurt, resisted, and fooled anyone.  After all, you will just want to believe that it was an honest mistake.

I have come a long way and been in many places but I do not want to use these to top anyone.  Maybe it is just natural on me to be gullible that is why I do not think where, what and who I am.  When I helped, I forget it afterwards because it is already done and I should not keep it on my head nor should track it.  When things have gone, they are not mine anymore.  I don’t want to use debt of gratitude, I don’t like to oppress, suppress or harass someone who owes me, I don’t want to use that weakness.  I am a person who doesn’t expect reciprocate of my deeds.  It is not my personality.  I think this is the reason why I don’t usually collect indebtedness, very rare I do it.  It is not my thing because I do not take advantage and take for granted the people.  I don’t want to reprove anyone.  Maybe I have no wisdom to put myself on others’ shoes.  Maybe I am not knowledgeable enough about people’s life.  Maybe I am not good or kind but fool.  Or maybe I am selfish when I thought I am right even though deep inside I meant it.  And maybe I am just simply not prudence to see the bigger picture.  Sometimes we are not just smart how to handle the feelings of people and the situation.  You hurt, you mess, and you fail them but the truth is you didn’t mean to do these.  Don’t worry, as long as the heart is pure, I want to make believe that we should not blame ourselves for these honest mistakes.