Last week, I was lying awake, brooding over a promise I'd made and hadn't kept for a very good friend a number of years ago. Not about money-those debts are, at least, payable. This was one of those other kinds of debts. This is the type of debt no amount of "I'm sorry" can repay.
We all carry those invisible IOUs, don't we? They're the kind that twist your stomach when a certain memory comes along, or when Facebook reminds you of "that day" five years ago. I remember telling my grandmother I'd visit her "next weekend"-but work got busy, life got in the way, and somehow that next weekend never came. She passed away before I could make good on that promise. That's a debt I will never be able to repay.
It's funny, not in a very funny way, how this kind of debt piles up when we least know it. Like emotional credit cards we go on swiping without checking for the balance. The time I didn't have the guts to stand up for a colleague getting bullied in a meeting. The book I want to write but don't work on because "I'm not ready yet." The phone call I should have made to my friend who was having a bad time because I felt too awkward and didn't know what to say.
Sometimes I find myself playing that game of "what if?" What if I had been braver? What if I had shown up? What if I had just picked up the phone? But what I've learned-and maybe you will too-is that these debts do not come with a repayment plan. There is no such thing as emotional bankruptcy we can declare to wipe the slate clean.
Just the other day, I sat having coffee with my wife; we spoke of how guilty we both still feel that we weren't there enough for her mom while her dad was ill. We were young, scared, and quite honestly, just a bit selfish. We thought we had all the time in the world. Years later, it's a debt we still carry. Her Mom never mentions it - she's too kind - but we know. You know what I mean?
But lately, I've been thinking about these debts differently. Maybe they're not meant to be paid off completely. Maybe they're more like tattoos on our soul - permanent reminders of lessons learned the hard way. That debt I carry about my grandmother taught me to never take time with loved ones for granted. Every time I feel its weight, I pick up the phone and call someone I love.
Of course, the most complex might be debts we owe ourselves: that unwritten novel, that career change which never quite happened because you were too terrified to make a leap of faith. These are the silent ones whispering to you at 3 AM, the "what-ifs" and the "if onlys." I guess you have a couple of those yourselves: the mountain you did not climb, the "I love you" you did not say, the risk you did not take.
But here's what I'm learning, and I'm very much still a work in progress: these debts can either break us or make us. They can be weights that drag us down or fuel to push us forward. That time when I let my friend down, well, it made me a more reliable person today. The dreams I postponed? Well, they are teaching me it's never too late to start.
So maybe, just maybe, the point isn't to pay off these debts completely. Maybe it's about letting them shape us into better humans. Using them as reminders to be kinder, braver, more present. To say "I love you" more often. To show up when it matters. To chase that dream that scares us.
For, though it is not in our power to undo the done, yet there is freedom for shaping the way of going on afterward. We may let these debts be our tutors rather than tormentors, and perhaps thus teach ourselves the most dignified way of paying our respects unto them-not trying to pay them off, but turning ourselves into someone who wouldn't incur them again.
What do you think? What irredeemable debts do you carry? And more importantly, how have they changed you?
Posted Using INLEO