I was fortunate enough today to come face to face with some home truths. They've come to me before in many ways, and will continue to come until they are inculcated in my bones. I'm sure it's the same for you.
1. Whatever you choose to call it--there is something bigger and greater out there and he/she sends us miracles and signs and helps us find ways where there seems to be no way.
2. Suffering is pain denied. It's not acknowledging pain enough so that it can be processed and let go. LET GO. We have to go through to get to it. The more we hide, deny, squash, tamp down, and mask it, the bigger it gets, the more it seeps out around the edges, corrosive, evil inducing, shame making, and life eroding.
3. If you don't know how to do something that you need to know how to do to make your life better, go find someone who is an expert and who can teach you, help you, listen to you, learn how to do it. I often expect that I should know how to do things that I really have no rote knowledge of. Most of these things are about interpersonal stuff. And computers. And nutrition. And laying tile. And how to get laid on my terms.
3.a. Be willing to pay a fair and decent price to these teachers, and therapists, and experts. You are worth it.
4. Express love. A nice young man I dated once had great difficulty talking about emotions. He didn't even like to say he liked a sport or a color. But he knew how to let me know he cared--digging my car out of the snow, or going out of his way to bring home Irish soda bread because he knew I loved it or leaving the planning of an evening up to me so that I'd be pleased about it. (Of course I was too young and dumb to appreciate this, sure that love had to look a certain way. I had the opportunity to let him know in later years how much I appreciated what he did for me).
I spoke to my baby bro when he was about to board a plane soon after the 9/11 attacks for a business trips. We were both nervous about him flying and I remember so clearly him saying to me "I love you." Not that I didn't know, and not that he didn't sometimes say it, but from that day to this we say it most every time we skype or email or talk. And, of course, it has such huge meaning--"I got your back," "I understand you," "we've shared experiences that no one else on earth can understand but the two of us." And I don't think I understood before then in the full way I do now what it means to truly be a sister and a brother, how very meaningful that is.
5. Be willing. I was on the bus today. The bus was stuck in traffic. The man next to me was a noisy mouth breather and the girl behind us was delivering a speech into her phone about her love life in a monotonous nasal tone. Believe me--it was the perfect mixture of events to send me into a vitrolic internal monologue filled with bile, curse words, dirty looks, and harumphing. I am in the harrumph hall of fame. But I took one of the lessons I learned earlier in the day and put it to work. Observe what you are feeling. Just observe. Reduce stress by not judging it. Just observe. My heart rate went down, my internal tirade abated and I was able to smile at a little baby, and admire her mother's red shoes. WILLING.
practice practice practice practice.
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