Welcome to this week’s 1-2-1 newsletter. A small pause to reflect, reconnect, and pay attention to what matters.
Inside you’ll find one idea I’m sitting with, two voices I’m learning from, and one question or practice to carry into the week ahead.
As a young person, there is so much pressure.
Pressure to choose the right courses. To get into the right program. To find the right job. To save for retirement. To buy a house. To prepare for a family. And whether it was true or not, it always seemed easy to find someone further ahead. Not only did life need to be figured out. It needed to be figured out yesterday.
That pressure weighed on me when I was younger. I remember the tension leading up to every big decision. The anxiety. The stress. I remember feeling incredibly lucky that things seemed to be working out.
Because underneath all of it was a quiet fear:
What would happen if I got it wrong?
Still Willing to Begin Again
There’s a popular saying:
You either get what you want, or you learn something.
I mostly agree with it.
But nothing about that statement prepares you for the grief of getting something wrong that you cannot fix. Not every mistake becomes a lesson wrapped neatly in gratitude. Sometimes a relationship ends. Sometimes a career path collapses. Sometimes the dream you built your identity around doesn’t survive contact with reality. Sometimes you hurt people you never intended to hurt. And sometimes there is no version of events where everything gets put back exactly as it was.
When I experienced my first real failure, the first thing I couldn’t fix, repair, or mend, I didn’t interpret it as, I failed. I interpreted it as, I am a failure.
From the outside, it’s often easy to see that someone else’s life isn’t over. You know they’ll laugh again. Love again. Build again. You can see possibilities they can’t. But from the inside, all you can see is the scar. And maybe that’s what nobody prepared me for.
Not success.
Not failure.
But irreversibility.
The realization that being conscientious, hardworking, kind, and well intentioned doesn’t exempt you from making decisions that carry consequences. You can do your best and still discover, years later, that there was a cost you didn’t understand when you agreed to pay it.
You can leave parts of yourself behind because you lacked the confidence to pursue them. You can choose wisely with the information you had and still grieve what might have been.
The older I get, the more I think that’s just life.
The version of you without the scar exists only in the past.
Going forward, you carry it with you.
2 Voices I’m Learning From
1.
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
— Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen is interesting to me.
He’s a very melancholic artist. There isn’t much in his catalogue that feels upbeat or carefree. When I was younger, he never really resonated with me. I was looking for certainty, optimism, and the reassurance that everything would work out if I just tried hard enough.
But now, having carried some of the scars we’ve been talking about into my mid thirties, there’s an undeniable recognition that he understood something I didn’t.
He knew what it meant to live alongside grief without letting it harden into bitterness.
He knew that being wounded and being beautiful were not opposites.
The crack isn’t something to hide or repair before life can continue. It’s evidence that you’ve lived long enough to love, to lose, to make mistakes, and to be changed by them.
And somehow, despite all of that, to still let the light in.
2.
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
— Carl Rogers
This quote resonates differently with me.
I don’t think Carl Rogers is talking about resignation. I don’t think he’s saying, “This is who I am, so why bother trying?”
I think he’s pointing to something much harder.
There are countless decisions we can make that reinforce the life we’ve already built. We can keep playing the role we’ve become known for. We can keep meeting expectations. We can keep moving in the same direction simply because we’ve already invested so much into getting here.
But sometimes there’s a quiet knowing that something no longer fits.
The career.
The relationship.
The identity.
The version of success we’ve been chasing.
Changing direction in those moments can feel impossible.
You would think that grit would be the answer. Or discipline. Or perseverance.
But Rogers suggests something different.
Acceptance.
Acceptance of where you are.
Acceptance of who you’ve been.
Acceptance of the fact that what once fit may no longer fit now.
Not resistance.
Not shame.
Not doubling down simply because turning around feels too costly.
Maybe real change begins when we stop arguing with reality long enough to acknowledge the truth.
Only then can we decide what comes next.
1 REFLECTION / ACTION
Ask yourself:
What scar am I still treating as evidence that I’m broken?
What responsibility is mine to own?
What grief still needs to be acknowledged?
What would it look like to honour this part of my story instead of hiding it?
Then take one small step toward repair. Have the conversation. Write the apology. Tell the truth. Or simply stop arguing with reality long enough to grieve what was lost.
Our culture celebrates wins.
Promotions.
Engagements.
Milestones.
Success stories.
But what do we do with the parts of ourselves that didn’t make it?
The relationships that changed us.
The dreams that ended.
The decisions we would never make again.
Maybe repair isn’t always about restoring what was lost.
Maybe sometimes repair means telling the truth about what happened. Taking accountability where it’s ours to take. Offering the apology that’s needed. Grieving what cannot be recovered.
And eventually, slowly, extending forgiveness to ourselves. Not because the scar isn’t real. But because refusing to forgive ourselves doesn’t undo the injury.
It only prevents healing.
There is a price to living wholeheartedly. The alternative is never risking enough to be wounded. And I don’t think that’s living either.
There is fear in not trying. But there is a different kind of fear that comes from failing.
What if it happens again?
I don’t know.
Maybe the truest form of repair is deciding that even with the scar, even knowing there are no guarantees, this version of you is still worthy of participating fully in life.
To love.
To create.
To trust.
To try again.
Not unchanged.
But unhidden.
Scarred, perhaps.
And still willing to begin again.
This is end of the Responsibility Arc.
Beginning | ← Boundaries are Relational |
If this resonated, share it with someone who might need it.
Thanks for being here.
Jack
P.S. I’ve been thinking a lot about pressure and freedom lately.
I recently published a short essay called The Freedom Paradox.
It goes deeper into some of what I’ve been working through.
eBook + audiobook here:
https://jackjohnstonwrites.gumroad.com/l/freedom-paradox