Our lecture for today, o cyberspace class, is the epistemology of the second chance. (Sometimes I just throw in a big word to see if anybody’s paying attention.) Frankly, I don’t remember much about epistemology from my scholarly life except I heard it used in my undergraduate philosophy classes and my graduate studies in theology.
To refresh my memory, I looked up the definition and found the word epistemology involves knowledge and the justification of knowledge; but then the dictionary wandered off into a question of what is knowledge, how can it be justified and I immediately remembered why I dropped out of seminary. Way too much digression and grey areas for a 23-year-old CPA who dealt in absolute numbers before answering a “call” to the ministry that was surely a wrong number.
During the forty years I wandered in the wilderness of numbers I grew accustomed to vague responses and half-truths. I tried to blend in with a landscape camouflaged by degrees of knowledge that were justified with competing strident voices blasting away at each other from polarized positions of territorial absolutes.
Yep, nothing like trying to convince people you own a piece of knowledge when they don’t agree with you. You can’t justify it to them no matter how hard you try and how loud you get because they own a piece of knowledge, too, which happens to be totally different from yours. That’s how it all goes downhill and the histrionics aren’t far behind. If only knowledge depended on the wisdom of golfers, epistemology would include the concept of Mulligans. Mulligans are second chances.
If someone hits a shot with a driver off the tee on the first hole and the little white golf ball vanishes mysteriously in deep woods closer to the fairway for the third hole than it is to the first hole, the golfer can say Mulligan and have a second chance to locate her own fairway again. She may hit a beautiful shot for her Mulligan or she may not, but the important thing is to have a new opportunity.
In our personal lives second chances are sometimes painfully obvious and at other times so subtle we may miss them. As an old numbers person, I couldn’t resist creating a list of five lessons for successful second chances.
Lesson Number One: Be open, available, alert to identify second chances; don’t think you won’t ever need one. You will.
Lesson Number Two: When you get a second chance, try not to think of it as an opportunity to repeat mistakes. Mistakes are hard to take back so don’t blow your Mulligan.
Lesson Number Three: Be sure to tell your friends about your second chance. It may give them hope and inspire them to offer one or accept one. Honestly, can there be too many second chances going around?
Lesson Number Four: Your second chance may be your last chance. Really? 100%.
Lesson Number Five: Never be afraid to take a second chance when you have one. As Franklin Roosevelt famously said when the Hounds of the Baskervilles were closing in around him, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Finally o cyberspace class, the lecture concludes with a little bit of knowledge mixed with a bunch of justification that adds up to the epistemology of the second chance as seen from the eyes of a 66-year-old who has had her own share of second chances; and has at various times in her life blown them, needed a third or fourth chance, and had some of them bring incredible happiness.
Be generous to those you love and even to those whose knowledge is different from yours. Ouch. Is that really necessary? Absolutely.
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This piece is one I originally published in September, 2012 following the death of my mother which had been a long time coming but given me a wonderful second chance for a more honest relationship with her in the final two years of her life – it was a second chance I embraced. Another second chance was on the horizon, but I had broken all of my own rules which made me oblivious to a second chance that came perilously close to being disastrous. I was reminded of this time in my life recently when I heard Gregory Alan Isakof’s song Second Chances that included the lyrics which became the new title for this post.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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