"You are right. She is wrong. I mean have you thought about it from her perspective? No, of course I love you. You are justified. Forget the friendship. But have you considered... never mind."

I continued to add logs to my internal Fortress of Rightness, should anyone be interested. They weren't. But I was ready, words perched on my tongue like a cocked gun. 

Then someone got mad at me. How cheeky! I was of course innocent of wrongdoing, and abandoned the previous litigation for a defense exposition. 

A glimmer of remembrance peeked above my mental horizon. Perhaps if I had a legitimate stance, the first friend did too. The second friend was irked at me about an effort I had made as a volunteer, in fact I had tossed a wad at the cause. But she felt trampled. 

The problem was I posted a moat nary two weeks ago, about dislodging our attention from self justification to the impact on the person who feels wronged. How annoying is that? 

I wrote back to the first friend. I thanked her for her opinion, and managed to climb out of my fox hole long enough to see generosity in her voice. How embarrassing. Then I wrote to the second friend, articulating my regret and expressing what I understood her grievance to be. Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Well, kinda.

Competent as I am at this self serving thing, the truth is it breeds isolation. If I want to share my planet with others, I need to put down my shields long enough to listen.