The slow climb out
02 February 2012 06:40 PM Categories: Facing fears
I have been thinking about anger, forgiveness, and compassion. Writer Jim Murdoch recently commented here on the idea that perhaps we have to forgive ourselves before we can forgive other people (while Grace discussed the pointlessness of the concept for her). There is some truth to the idea that self-forgiveness has to come first, though I also see the two working in parallel, each process supporting the other. I’m in the midst of forgiving myself, struggling with what forgiveness means for me and how I apply it to other people (while I talk a good talk, I certainly haven't forgiven all the people on my pain list). I've concluded that a huge part of forgiveness involves compassion, suffering together with others, a recognition of our shared humanity and pain even when our viewpoints differ, even when the other person's vision of us is clouded by their own aching pain.
My desire to be open to others’ misery, even those who have hurt me and are not capable of being open to mine, is strong. I am beginning to feel that being open emotionally does not put me at soul risk (though, of course, this is a very new feeling, an ideal that I have barely put into practice. I can't claim complete emotional openness and 24-hour selfless compassion.). What is so interesting about this feeling, new and delicate and soft, is how it fits together with my recent shifts, my solid acknowledgment of my strength and my desire -- and, hopefully, ability -- to become more connected. Compassion frees me from emotional selfishness and allows me to make myself vulnerable even in the face of rejection, though it doesn't require me to pursue bad situations or put myself in precarious emotional conditions. Being compassionate is not the same as being foolhardy.
Lest you think I really am a Pollyanna, I’ve been writing a lot of very angry personal stuff this week, things totally inappropriate for anyone’s consumption but mine. This writing serves a purpose. It acknowledges my feelings, that I deserve to be treated well, no matter if I am a tempestuous toddler, an angry teenager, or a struggling adult. It carries the conviction that I am capable of authenticity, that I am capable of holding and comforting myself when I am scared and lonely, but can also ask for help when I need it, and that my needs are legitimate and real. These feelings and changes were partially the result of my ability to finally give long-simmering anger a voice and shape. I am grateful to that anger for allowing me to be myself, for helping me recognize when I have been wronged, and for protecting me in difficult times.
But I don’t want to live in anger. I let it serve its purpose. I open my heart again, knowing that I am strong and all too human, that I make mistakes but that my mistakes are not what make me. We all suffer. We all cause pain. Sometimes we run away from suffering, we push it away or deny it, which only traps us in its snares, and in that escape we often hurt others.
It’s people stuck in this cycle for whom I have the most compassion right now, the blind and hurting, those who are scared but don’t know it, those who want closeness but dart away at intimacy. I am slowly climbing out of that dark and airless place, one foot on the fresh meadow grass, the other pushing out of the sludge. I hope that my burgeoning openness, my growing compassion, will help me see others clearly, or at the very least calm me in times of trouble, anxiety, and pain.
We are all interconnected despite our vast differences. The thought comforts me.
Image: Not my kind of compassion. Some positive thinker chalked this on the sidewalk on our route to and from the boy's school. The joke we made was that if you quickly hugged the next person you saw, probably a stranger, they would slug you ("Quick! Slug someone!"). And maybe you would deserve it. Compassion is not forcing your lovin' arms around someone who doesn't want them there.
Comments
Easier said than done
31 January 2012 06:08 PM Categories: Facing fears
I struggle with accepting anger in myself and others, wrestle with being with it and not reacting in kind when someone directs (or misdirects) it my way.
This is good. This is hard. To sit with anger, your own or someone else's, to let it be without action or harsh words, with silent contemplation, can be almost impossible. But I think there are ways to feel it and, even if you express it badly at the moment, to pull back and wait for a moment of coolness to discuss it with the other person and to listen to their anger, too. A lot of anger comes from pain, either pain from the immediate present or something left over and suppressed, suppressed and simmering and ready to blow. It can come from fear, too, fear of feeling that pain again, so shove it away, push away the trigger, the other.
But what I really want to write about is anger and forgiveness. I know some people don’t believe in forgiveness (perhaps for them the goal is indifference). I know that it isn’t always possible and is dependent on the situation and the people involved, on the harshness of the crime and sometimes on whether the wrongdoer has taken responsibility for their actions. It sounds like a cliché, and I’m struggling with it myself, but forgiveness is a gift both to me and the person I am forgiving. It is a way of seeing someone and letting them be that person, letting go of attachment to anger, tracing the anger to where it belongs, feeling the pain and setting it free.
Maybe there are people you can forgive but can never be close to again. Maybe there are people whom you forgive and discover that forgiveness is the thing that cleared the way for renewed friendship. Forgiveness doesn’t have an agenda. It is a form of freedom from heavy emotion that drags one down. It's acceptance of the other person's limitations and your own, a nod to humanity.
Here are my forgiveness crucibles: unfairness; emotional cruelty; not giving someone a voice. I can go around and around in my mind about them, go over pains from years ago or just last week, obsessing over the wrong someone did me, imagining the conversation I would have with them, if they would only give me a voice. And so my psyche revs up and the anger lives again and my attachment to the situation is never severed.
I say forgive. Let go. Drop the reins. And, if you must, walk away.
It's a goal, anyway.
I chose the category "Facing fears" for this post because I think to listen to anger, to accept it in yourself and in other people, and then to choose to forgive, is a scary thing. It requires presence and risk taking and authenticity. Bravery. This feels very pie in the sky, but it's also how I feel at this moment.
Image of the boy running from waves in Carmel, free and happy.
The landscape of change
29 January 2012 07:06 AM Categories: Facing fears | Friends
The air is cold with a hint of the warmth to come. My picnic basket is packed with healthy, delicious food that I’ve prepared myself, and in the grove of trees off in the distance, the rest of my life awaits. There are people I’ve never met, eagerly anticipating a new connection, and the people I’ve known for years, my close loved ones, the friends who are part of me, they are mingling with the new, happy to see me change and to be a part of it. There will be feasting and dancing and when the sun goes down we will gather by a bonfire fed by the things that didn't work in my life, irrational fear and muddy sadness and self-protective separation going up in flames. I will sit near the fire, my son tucked close to me, his father next to him, both a vital part of my transformation.
The rules I set for myself, the ones where I showed my goodness through self-sacrifice (a conscious choice, not a martyrdom) and removal from the world, do not apply to this new self. I can have an outside life and a happy child. I might even be capable of long-term connection, might allow this heart of mine to sink into true, unselfish love and support.
This shift is permanent, not that there won’t be trouble along the way. I know myself. I can be true to her, authentic, present. I don’t need anyone to show me the path, though I do need people to share the journey with me, to accept my weaknesses and share joy in my strengths, while I do the same for them.
This is a better representation than yesterday's (deleted) post about my inner state. More sleep and a conscious attempt to eat more help with my equilibrium.
Image of the shoes I'll wear on the journey, because I want to look natty along the way.
Cognitive dissonance
25 January 2012 10:32 AM Categories: Writing prompts
I play with the edge and no one even knows that I’m doing it. You may think you’ve got me pegged, but you’re wrong. My soft exterior belies my second carapace, the protective armor I developed over time to keep my integrity, my authenticity. Where my heart used to be, there is fire, my hands and feet are ice, and my mind is calm and cool and driven by anger layered under years of self-control.
I love children and animals and kind men, but I have a soft spot for the rebels, the ones who must be free. I look at them and I see what I want for myself, an open life, a fluid carapace that falls away when needed, a life only controlled when necessary. They ride the edge without resentment, take on stray dogs and people in need of a schooling. I watch them from my window on their motorcycles, with their tattoos or piercings or pointy shoes. I watch them and feel my carapace start to dissolve, with lust, want, desire – or maybe I’m just making plans for my future.
Three things most people don’t know about me:
That I learned how to shoot a shotgun in sixth grade
Where the fiction ends and the truth begins in my writing
The true content of my innermost thoughts
From the prompt "Allow me to introduce myself," which is always the first prompt of the Round Robin (including telling three things that most people don't know about me). This is the first time I went for something outside of the standard. Very lightly edited.
I really wanted to write more today, to take some time to craft something, but I am working on very little sleep and the stuff I am coming up with is so dark and filled with loathing that I don't think it belongs here or anywhere. I have to accept that today will not be productive for writing and acknowledge that when I am this tired, moments of levity are hard to come by.
Image by bábo gábo.
Truth or dare
23 January 2012 06:03 AM Categories: Quotidian existence
Maybe it was those dreams of French hackers who took over my Facebook account, adding me to groups on postmodernism and cooking, on philosophies of sophistry, on European pop groups and flexible sexuality. Maybe I was too hot last night. Maybe it was the stomachache I went to bed with that could have been the beginning of a night of anguish but was held off with pills. Maybe I expected too much. Maybe this is my protective carapace in action – just try to reach me through this hidden, hard shell. Go ahead. Try.
The house gleams, clean from floor to fur-free floor (with some exceptions). The day will be gray and blustery and I will conquer worlds from the filtered light of cloud cover. I have to-do lists. I have fires to feed. In my mind there is a heated swimming pool in a luxurious addition to a house I’ve never been in. The water shimmers, it moves slightly as if the earth beneath it is adjusting itself. I stand on the lip, feet wet, in my bathing cap and my bathing suit from seventy years ago (the fabric is heavy and the water binds it to my skin). I do not face the pool, but somehow I make the backwards dive, smooth, clean, triumphant, body sharp as a knife.
In the morning I drink coffee. In the afternoon, hot water. At night, beer and wine. When resourceful, present, I cook every night. I improvise, it’s like jazz or being on stage, and so what if the audience is small and my work, my art, hidden?
I am not supposed to be beholden to my moods, to let emotional whim control my day and how I see myself (it’s an Ennegram type four thing, and it makes sense). If I tie my stability to my every strong feeling, I am bound to implode. But there are days when I feel strong and confident, when I am open, and there are days when I feel strong and confident in a defensive way. I like to ride these feelings when I have them, even if I am shadow-boxing in the living room by the heat of a midday fire, alone except for the animals, making the air move around us, watching the raindrops on the window merge and take each other down.
My body and my mind are my own. I am sovereign over this land. Try and catch me, try and categorize me, take what you see and make it into something else. Go ahead. Try.
I dare you.
Image originally by Margaret Chute of Dorothy Sebastian and Joan Crawford (!) in 1927; scanned by Allison Marchant.
I feel better now.