If we would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainly need to eliminate these [emotional] hangovers. This doesn’t mean we need to wander morbidly around in the past. It requires an admission and correction of errors now. Our inventory enables us to settle with the past. When this is done, we are really able to leave it behind us. When our inventory is carefully taken, and we have made peace with ourselves, the conviction follows that tomorrow’s challenges can be met as they come.
Although all inventories are alike in principle, the time factor does distinguish one from another. There’s the stop-check inventory, taken at any time of the day, whenever we find ourselves getting tangled up.
Whenever I find myself getting tangled up, I usually do go to the inventory pretty quickly. Sometimes. Usually. Often. After a while, when my negative emotions subside a bit, I do remember that at the bottom of my distress is me, and something wrong with me, and something that needs to be changed within me.
One thing I’m struggling with is how to know if tolerance is the same as acceptance. What I decide is wrong with me at times could be that I just need to accept that people suck. But I think that may be missing some of the point. I don’t know right from wrong all the time. I don’t know what’s best all the time. What I’m reaching for is something different within me, that’s wrong, that either thinks I’m superior and know what’s right or that fails to recognize that I don’t see the whole picture and that I’m actually the same as everyone else, not (in this case) better.
Don't Drink and Don't Die 