Let's level-set. I know exactly or nearly nothing. This is pure discovery all day, every day. This is my attempt to lay aside ego, challenge my own truths to see if they hold up, and become a better human being.
I want to unhinge my rusty, stubborn, useless beliefs, habits, assumptions, practices, and ideas. These antiquated tools do not serve my purpose: To increase joy. To decrease suffering. Mine and others'. I want to be changed. I crave transformation. I require evolution, perpetual development. I supposed by that definition, I may never really mature. So be it.
I've been exploring new tools. A scalpel here, a hammer there. Trying not to let myself get away with too much. I meditated today. That's new as of this year. On the whole, I don't find this itchy business of being still and listening and looking within particularly comfortable. But the joy--the sheer, elemental, unadulterated, raw, pulsing joy of digging around and inside and finding something beautiful and good and worth the space it takes up in my chest--this joy seems to merit the squirmy discomfort of silence, a discomfort I have been unlearning one day at a time.
I am reading Susan Scott and delighting that in one little giant book, in her one little giant lifetime, she has managed to pack in so many lifetimes of wisdom and a clarity of perspective that turns a short list of principles for deeper, more meaningful conversations into a thrilling page-turner. Perhaps this is because with every page I find myself discovering more and more about myself (a subject I deem infinitely fascinating to myself). I am especially struck by Scott's ideas on developing an awareness of one's emotional wake.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou
(Off-topic: I had a funny little dream in which I was taking a drawing class with easels and colorful sticks of pigment and everything and Susan Scott was the teacher. In my dream she was this spunky, tiny, old-as-the-hills, white-haired sage who somewhat resembled Penny Simkin, the legendary doula, activist, and teacher after whom Bastyr's Simkin Center is named. It had occurred to me earlier while awake that Susan Scott is somewhat of a doula in her own right. Her perspective and principles around fostering meaningful conversations are deeply aligned with the principles of being a birth doula. Among other functions, a doula facilitates an environment in which the mother is empowered and safe to make her own choices about her birth experience. In natural childbirth with little or no pharmaceutical intervention speeding or slowing the process or alleviating physical discomfort, the mother and baby are free to chemically "converse"--they exchange hormonal signals, sometimes with lengthy pauses--and work together so that the baby can be born with maximum joy, minimal suffering (not to be confused with pain), and a deep connection to the mother. All of this is discussion for another day.)
The recognition of my own emotional wake has been one of my meditations over the past two weeks; the idea that during each interaction with another human being, no matter how brief, we imprint upon each other feelings that we and they may carry around for minutes or a lifetime, either consciously or not. It is as though our instruments ring out into the world and, without trying and sometimes without knowing, we tune each other to our own frequencies. I suppose meditation (or reflection or prayer, depending on your faith and how you choose to go about these things) can be a form of tuning one's instrument. I am trying to observe my own frequency before I step out in to the world, before I engage, much as I might check the mirror to make sure my hair isn't, well, too enormous and I don't have some bit of leafy green vegetable stuck between my teeth. It feels important. Also new. This one is pretty clunky, really, so I might as well get started already. We have so very little time and so very much to learn and unlearn.
Incidentally, people will mostly tell me quite nicely when I have a teensy bit of uncomely something stuck in my teeth, but it is so rare that when I'm being a little bit of an asshole anyone will come right out and just tell me so. Ben does, and he does it with such love and humor and patience that it's hard not to laugh at myself and throw my arms around him in gratitude. I want to be a jerk even less than I want to walk around grinning with broccoli in my teeth.
People are our mirrors, and we are theirs. I am sitting with that thought today. Some of the fairly decent and not entirely boring people I enjoy least are those who reflect back to me something of myself I don't much care to see. It's in their faces, in their reactions to my words or tone or expression, hackles rising, or a wall going up, or avoidance, or indifference, or fear (I can be relentlessly "helpful"). I've shown them something ugly--generally some judgement or a jagged, crusty piece of ego--and they are showing me with their response that I'm doing it. I have made the space around myself unsafe. Maybe they have done the same. Maybe I need to check my frequency, in some cases offer an apology, start over with better intent. For better or worse, most people can't seem to help themselves but react to what they encounter in others. And they generally respond with their best stuff when I am giving them my best stuff. At the most basic level, it happens at the grocery store all the time. I smile, people smile back. Oversimplified, it's very often true that you get what you give.
And then there are people I absolutely adore. The people who radiate their best selves like beacons and we reflect and amplify their beauty with our best selves. The people who make it safe to unfold, to ring out. You are the rare and precious people in this world who change the rest of us by making yourselves a safe place to evolve and grow and get it wrong sometimes. You increase joy. You neither invite nor harbor suffering. You reject fear and you embrace the gritty discomfort of work and silence, which are sometimes the same thing. You let love change you. You leave the most beautiful wake. You do it on purpose. Thank you. Thank you every day. I'm watching. I'm listening. I'm reading. I'm learning from you. (No pressure.)
Please help me become better at these conversations that are our relationship. Hold me to this commitment, and tell me when I miss:
I will engage fully, with loving intent, and with gratitude that we are here right now, together. I will make a sincere effort to bring you my truest, best self and make the space around me a safe place for your truest, best self to visit; I will expect the same in return. I will make mistakes (and for the love of God, please let me in on them when I am too dull to see them myself!). I will apologize. I will be patient with your mistakes and open to your apologies. I will be honest about what I feel, and honor my feelings. I will listen to what you feel, and honor your feelings. I will listen to what you say and seek to understand it. I will try to hear what you are not saying. I will ask questions. Oh, will I ever ask questions. I will respect that we have chosen to engage one another in meaningful conversation, even when we disagree with one another's ideas. I will seek to be positively changed by our conversations, rather than to change you. I will leave our conversations richer for what I have learned about and from you, and about and from myself. I will appreciate you and what you bring. I will say thank you.
