My stepdaughter emailed me today, first time in three months. 

She said she had taken one useful thing away from my book chapter with the list on how to gain more energy every day:

To forgive yourself.

Every day for at least one thing. 

Not so you can continue to do wrong or stear clear of difficult changes, but so you can embrace the general frailty of your life. 

Maybe it’s that little piece of chocolate you ate because you were stressed, or the extra dumb movie you indulged in because you were tired. 

Maybe something ‘worse’.

Maybe something even less problematic, but something that is important to you. To let go of.

It’s especially important to forgive yourself when you are about to get swamped by that pile of laundry, isn’t it?

Well, how would I know?

It felt, as usual, a bit pretentious to send my stepdaughter anything like this.

I mean, I have people to do my laundry and cook my food. And I can afford a house with a view of the Pacific Ocean

She is unemployed and lives with her children, including Michael with his autism, in a desert border city in Arizona.

Not much frailty in my life from her view, I guess. Excerpt perhaps whenever the cancer returns … 

But it was a chapter from my latest book that I liked, and I wanted to hear her opinion on it first. So I took a risk. 

Because, you know, I’m trying to write it for everyone, not just a select few. 

And it is a principle that really appeals to me. But only one of seven in the chapter …

On the list of things that can give you energy on a bad day, forgiveness seemed the most important.

To her. To Caroline.

Given our personal family history, it felt like a synchronicity that that was her choice. How many times have we not  …  

But anyway, I’m sure she was honest in her response. Honest that this was the part that resonated most with her.

And I am glad.

I wonder if she will ever tell me what exactly she was thinking of today when she mentioned forgiveness?

Well, no more time. Here I am, about to head into the next of 12 meetings today, with a lovely view of Los Angeles from my office. 

The fall sun actually makes those ugly skyscrapers look beautiful as it reflects off the glass. I usually pull the blinds down and turn on the light in the office to get the optimal lighting for my Zoom meetings—the marketing division in London is up next. It seems like they have a new plan to push our Cloud Infrastructure Management Package to the European market. Hmm …  

And beside that email there is the email from Caroline, thanking me for maybe the second time in her life. 

I can’t tell you how much that means to me.

But at least I can leave the blinds open and postpone that damn meeting for another day.

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MARCUS CHEN NIANZHEN, Carrie’s stepfather. October 2016, L.A.

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Cover Photo by Robin Holmquist on Unsplash

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