Two Truths

Well hell. It was bound to happen eventually.

Any time two free spirits choose to walk through life together, they're eventually going to stumble into a disagreement. It isn't because either person is wrong. It isn't because either person loves the other any less. It's because no two people arrive at today by walking the same road yesterday. Every one of us is informed by our victories, our failures, our trauma, our professions, our families, and every mile we've quietly walked. We don't often recognize that lens because it's all we've ever known. To us, it simply feels like reality.

And that's where conflict is born.

The details of the disagreement don't really matter. They almost never do. What matters is that two people can look at the exact same situation and honestly arrive at two completely different conclusions, not because one of them is lying or stupid, but because each is standing on a different mountain built from a different lifetime of experiences. Those are two different truths. If I had walked her path, I might very well see the world exactly as she does. If she had walked mine, she might see it exactly as I do. Neither path is invalid. They're simply different.

Dawna and I had our first disagreement this weekend.

Calling it a fight would be giving it more weight than it deserves. It wasn't that. We weren't yelling. We weren't attacking one another. We simply disagreed. Unfortunately, I made a mistake. I allowed my own experience to masquerade as absolute truth. I assumed that because I had lived through something, my perspective somehow carried more weight than hers. I didn't leave enough room for the possibility that her experiences had taught her something equally true from where she stood. I let ego get in the way of curiosity.

And that's on me.

The irony isn't lost on me, either. One of the things I love most about Dawna is that she isn't me. I love her past because it shaped the woman she has become. I love the devilish grin she gets before telling a joke she already knows is going to make me laugh. I love the excitement in her eyes when she talks about her motorcycle or starts asking mechanical questions because she genuinely wants to learn. I love how fiercely protective she is of me. I love how reassuring she is. I love how deeply she loves me.

So why would I ever expect her to think exactly like I do?

I wouldn't.

That would mean losing the very perspective that makes her who she is.

I hurt her.

Not deeply. Not permanently. But I hurt her enough that I immediately wished I could take the moment back. I apologized, because that part was easy. But I've never believed that "I'm sorry" is a complete apology. Those are just the opening words. The real apology is what comes afterward. It's changing the behavior that caused the hurt. It's earning trust back instead of expecting it to magically reappear. It's demonstrating, through action instead of words, that you actually learned something.

That's the part I owe her.

Life has left me with scars. Some you can see. Most you can't. Those scars shape how I see the world just as surely as hers shape how she sees it. The mistake isn't having scars. The mistake is expecting someone else's scars to create the same map as your own. They won't. They can't. And honestly, that's a good thing. If we were identical, there would be nothing left to learn from one another.

I don't want to give this disagreement more significance than it deserves. Quite the opposite. I hope years from now I don't even remember what we disagreed about. What I do hope I remember is the lesson. The next time I find myself absolutely convinced that I'm right, I hope I stop long enough to ask a better question.

"What has she lived that I haven't?"

Because the answer to that question might teach me something.

And if I've learned anything from loving this incredible woman, it's that loving someone means remaining willing to learn from them.

Every single day.