NB: here’s a recorded version for part three for those who would like to listen along!
Making mercy through reflexivity
By the time we arrive at Part 3, we have looked at regret, hindsight, and the limits that show up in love. But recognising these things does not automatically make us kinder to ourselves or others.
We can know we are limited and still feel ashamed of our limits. We can understand context and still replay a moment with accusation. We can believe in compassion and still struggle to practice it when the noise inside us is too loud.
This is where reflexivity becomes useful — not as a theory to admire, but as a practice of mercy-making.
For life is noisy. Noisy with actual noise: traffic, music, television, podcasts, your family, your colleagues, your students. But life is also noisy in our inner world: with expectations we carry from others, with judgments we share and receive, with disappointments, with trauma, with grief, with hopes, with conversations we rehearse, with moments that stick in our heads long after they have passed.
It can get crowded.
And often, the noisiest things in our lives are not necessarily the “big life” events that seem worthy of our attention. Sometimes they are small moments that keep squeaking. The awkward encounter. The disappointment of a friend. The feeling of inadequacy in a moment where we were supposed to perform. The tone-deaf sentence we wish we had not said. The silence we cannot quite interpret. The place where our limit showed itself before we were ready to admit it.
And limits do not only show up in relationships. They show up in the strange, exhausting expectation that we should be excellent across every part of our lives at the same time: thoughtful parents, generous friends, present partners, capable workers, faithful community members, emotionally regulated adults, healthy bodies, responsive communicators, proficient household managers, creative selves – all of these roles demand something of us, whether or not they are socially or structurally implicit or explicit. We are asked to keep expanding, improving, responding, carrying — often without much attention to the fact that all of this is being asked of one limited human life.
So the noise is not only, why did I say that? or why did I react that way? Sometimes it is also, why can’t I do all of this better? Why can’t I keep up? Why do I feel stretched so thin by things other people seem to manage? Why does my capacity run out before the expectations do?
This is where reflective practice can help.
Not because it gives us a neat answer, but because it creates space around an experience. It lets the moment breathe rather than fester.
I have always liked the image of an accordion: expanding, drawing in air, creating the conditions for music. Something similar can happen when we give a moment enough room to be seen properly.
Reflective practice becomes reflexive when it asks us not only to notice what happened, but to notice the conditions in which it happened — the limits, assumptions, expectations, fears, and histories that shaped what we could see.
The point is not simply to be kinder to ourselves, though kindness matters. The point is to become more accurate. Reflexivity asks us to see enough of the frame that our interpretation is not ruled by shame, fear, exhaustion, or disappointment alone. It helps us ask what aspects of the story we are telling about a moment are true, or merely loud.
That matters because, in the moment itself, we rarely see clearly. We experience things through instinct, fatigue, embarrassment, fear, longing, defensiveness. We interpret quickly because we are trying to survive socially, emotionally, relationally. And then later, when the moment returns to us, we often judge ourselves as though we should have had perfect clarity while living inside it.
Reflexivity interrupts that.
It does not ask us to excuse ourselves. It does not ask us to avoid responsibility. It simply asks us to look again, with more of the frame included.
One simple way to begin is to take a small event that has stayed with you. Not necessarily a crisis. Something minor but noisy. A conversation that felt awkward. A moment at work where you felt caught out. A parenting moment that left you ashamed. A conflict you keep replaying. An experience where you felt you fumbled, withdrew, overreacted, or misunderstood. Or even one of those quieter moments where you simply reached the end of yourself and wondered why you did not have more to give.
Then ask:
What was I thinking and feeling in that moment?
Not what should I have thought. Not what would a wiser person have felt. What was actually happening inside me?
Then ask:
How might a compassionate observer describe this situation?
Not someone who excuses everything. Not someone who flatters you. But someone kind enough to see more than your self-critique. Someone who can notice the context, the pressure, the confusion, the fear, the limit.
And then ask:
What wisdom becomes available when those two voices are held together?
The first voice tells us what it felt like from the inside. The compassionate observer helps us see the wider frame. Between them, something gentler and often truer can emerge.
Maybe the wisdom is that you do need to apologise. Maybe it is that you were carrying more than you realised. Maybe it is that you interpreted someone’s silence as rejection because of an older fear. Maybe it is that you need rest, help, a boundary, courage, repair, or simply a little less contempt for yourself.
This is not self-indulgence. It is not endlessly circling our feelings for the sake of it. At its best, reflexivity helps us evaluate the truth and helpfulness of our assumptions. It helps us ask whether the story we are telling about a moment is the only possible story, or whether another reading might also be available.
It is important to say this clearly: reflexive practice is not a replacement for therapy, medical care, or specialist support. Some experiences, traumas, relationships, and patterns need skilled help, and there is wisdom in seeking it. What I am describing here is smaller and more ordinary: a daily practice of paying attention, a grassroots habit of self-awareness, context, and compassion for the ordinary noise of being human.
We often fear this kind of mirror because we expect it to accuse us. But what if the mirror could be a kind witness?
What if looking again did not mean gathering evidence against ourselves, but making room for wisdom?
This is where reflexivity becomes mercy-making.
Mercy is not forgetting. It is not pretending the hard thing did not happen. It is not saying that consequences do not matter, or that harm should be minimised. Mercy is not a mood, or a soft-focus lens placed over reality.
Mercy is a disciplined way of seeing.
It holds together two things that are often pulled apart: truth and humanity. It says: this happened. It matters. And it happened within a human life.
A life with limits.
A life with context.
A life still becoming.
When regret collapses time into one harsh verdict, reflexivity gently expands it again. When disappointment narrows a relationship to a single interpretation, reflexivity asks what else might be true. When shame turns a moment into an identity, reflexivity gives us another way to look. And when exhaustion convinces us that our limits are proof of failure, reflexivity reminds us that having an end to capacity is not a moral flaw.
It does not make the moment disappear, but it can make it less total.
It lets the heart breathe.
It gives the mind rest.
And perhaps this is why it matters so much. Not because it makes us innocent, but because it helps us become honest without becoming cruel.
To see ourselves in snapshots is not to deny meaning. To recognise limits is not to excuse everything. To practise reflexivity is to learn how to look again — at ourselves, at others, at the lives we are still learning how to live — with clarity, context, and mercy.
And maybe that is the quiet work underneath all three parts.
Not to remove regret.
Not to perfect love.
Not to resolve every tension.
But to resist turning human lives into permanent verdicts.
And to practise, again and again, the mercy of seeing more than one frame.
K x
Thanks for coming along with me on this 3-parter – would love to hear from you if anything about regret/snapshots resonates x
Better With Pockets 