It’s inevitable.
Your partner, child, friend, or colleague makes a mistake.
Or you make one.
No one is perfect.
No one is exempt.
Your wife miscommunicates or misses the point.
Your son exercises poor judgment.
Your friend fails to come through on something.
Your colleague oversleeps on the day of the big presentation.
You lose your temper . . . and say things you regret.
We all screw up, and if these screwups form a pattern, we have a problem.
But if they are occasional, unintentional, addressed promptly, and answered for with contrition, they are both acceptable and excusable, part and parcel of the complicated rhythm and uncertainty of life.
We aim for stability, reliability, predictability, consistency.
And at best we achieve an approximation.
A dance in which we move gracefully across the floor, synchronizing our steps, dipping and twirling, stretching and supporting, and only once in a while stepping on our partner’s toes.
But when we play the game of gotcha, eagerly pointing out another’s mistakes with glee, demeaning and disparaging the other to make ourselves seem superior, calling the other the black devil while pretending to be lily white, relationships get out of step, and the carefully choreographed dance becomes a brutal boxing match, with both partners determined to deliver the knockout blow.
Gotcha doesn’t right, strengthen, repair, or rebuild anything.
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Gotcha causes even the most rock solid relationships to crack, crumble, and disintegrate under the constant hammering of contempt.
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Gotcha causes even the most rock solid relationships to crack, crumble, and disintegrate under the constant hammering of contempt, to erode and be washed away by the relentless river of acid.
Where did nailing, crucifying, and watching someone bleed ever get us?
A simple shift, a slight change in pronunciation, turns the whole situation around.
Gotcha means I caught you in the act and am calling you out.
Got you means I’ll catch you if you fall; I’ve got you covered.
Gotcha is confrontational.
Got you is conciliatory.
Gotcha begins in belligerence and ends in defeat of endless battle.
Got you starts with civility in and ends in the victory of reconciliation.
Whether you win or lose depends on how you choose to play the game.
The choice, as always, is yours.
Originally published on Tom Aplomb
Photo—a2gemma/Flickr
