My Post Office Box (P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816) has been a great gift, it is always stuffed with letters from all over the country, old handkerchiefs and notes for Maria, cars, envelopes stuffed with $5 bills, some checks, kind notes about the blog and my books. One stood out, it was from Maryland, from a reporter I worked with at the Washington Post, her name is Claudia, she wrote that our paths never crossed, “you were too busy hustling for the next story and I tended to keep a low profile.” There were, she added – “you will forgive me for saying this – quite a few ambitious young men who hustled through the newsroom in search of bigger opportunities,she was very happy there and stayed for a long time and recently retired to “a right-brained life.”

I remember her name, I have no memory of her, Claudia is quite right, I was too busy and distracted to know anybody.

I do forgive her, of course, it was a beautiful note, rich in many mind things about me and my work and true. Claudia heard me much later on an NPR interview, was shocked to realize I was the same Jon Katz and has followed my writing and the blog. “The journey you’ve taken to reconfigure your life and relationships is heroic,” she wrote. Thank you, I hope so.

I get a lot of messages like that, not always that nice.  People who knew me in the other world are quite astonished to see me in this new one, they can’t quite put the two together. Few people who knew me back when liked me much or got to know me well, the most frequently used words to describe me are “remote,” “ambitious,” “driven,” “ruthless.” And “bright,” they always say I was “bright.” I made few friends then, and am in touch with almost no one from any part of my life that is more than a decade old. Like the therapists say, you can’t have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person. I was not a healthy person.

I supposed I may have seemed ambitious, I suppose I was, from my vantage point was different. I was always terrified, always in a panic, always looking to escape, unable to settle or connect. No one got close to me, and I got close to no one. It was a kind of mad whirl, I was always looking over people’s heads, always for the next thing, always running and hiding, I am surprised that looked like ambition, but I was good at wearing masks. Like a functioning alcoholic, I always hid my fear and confusion, and kept moving all the time, nobody ever quite got to know me or catch up with me.

Those were hard and painful times for me, sometimes I feel badly that I never got to know nice and introspective  people like Claudia who wrote this honest and poignant letter and also sent a $60 as a subscription for my blog.  Looking back is painful for me, and not useful in any way I know. I could spend a lot of time lamenting who I was and wishing I had been somebody else, but I think what really matters is who I am now, and who I am working hard to be. Still, I think Claudia and I would like one another now, I liked her letter very much, I suspect we would connect. Time is unforgiving, you cannot take your life back.

Claudia said she started reading my books because she was a sucker for dog literature, “but the slowly unspooled revelations about your early life have taught me how wrong I have sometimes been to judge bright, hard-working, remote-seeming people as somehow disengaged from the human condition.” Ironic, I have learned the same thing. I was, in fact, disengaged from the human condition, swimming in an endlessly flowing stream of anger and panic.

Much of my work in life in recent years has been to re-engage with the human condition, to find life, to find love, to communicate with my family, to make sure I don’t see past people like this letter-writer, clearly someone I wish I had gotten to know. I would not, I think, make that mistake now. And I have learned to be very careful about judging, compassion is empathy, we are all human beings trying to make our way in the world.

Still, I will admit  it is hard to see these mirrors of me, I am not angry, but  I sometimes feel great sorrow at so many years wasted and lost, the friends I will never know. Claudia is right, compassion is about empathy, it is about withholding judgment,  standing in another’s shoes, even when those shoes are running away. Nobody has it easy, no one lives without struggle.

I suppose another of the many blessings of my blog is that people like Claudia can come across me and my blog and books and find a way to communicate with me, can re-connect over so much time and change. They take the time to write me, it means a lot. It does not alter the past but helps me to understand it and forgive myself for it. I did not, of course,  mean to be that kind of person, in my own mind, I only desperately sought peace of mind, I did not have any idea how to find it, I was seeking approval every minute of every day. I’m glad Claudia forgives me, I would like to forgive myself, I remember waking up much later in life, sobbing on a therapist’s sofa, saying over and over again, this is not the person I want to be, this is not who I am, I will not spend the rest of my life this way.

And I am not spending the rest of my life this way, wonderful people are coming into my life, I connect with them.

I am here to tell you that you cannot change the past, there is little productive to be gained in dwelling on it. You can definitely change the present, and the future too, if you wish. I can promise you that. Thanks for writing Claudia, for finally letting me get to know you, for writing this thoughtful and very loving letter on Christmas Day, I thank my Post Office Fox for that, it is my new repository for magical messages.