If you have children, or have been a child, you’ve heard the words, “why?” Literally one thousand times a day. Why is the sky blue, why is ice cream cold, why does my finger hurt, why won’t Sallie play with me, why do I have to take a bath? From our earliest childhood we have a desire to understand the complexities of life around us. We ask why to fill in the blanks.
As we get older, the path to understanding is not always as simple, and not within our own power to navigate. Our minds are programmed to fill in the blanks, making the gaps that much more difficult. Brené Brown writes and speaks about just that. She explains that in the absence of fact, our minds are hard wired to fill in the blanks. We create stories, usually far more dramatic than the actual truth when we don’t know the other person’s reasons. Their ‘why.’ We tell their side of the story.
And the result doesn’t paint the other person positively. They become the villain.
But I’m slowly realizing that there will be gaps in my understanding that I can’t fill in. Areas where I simply don’t understand why a series of events led to an unanticipated outcome. I naturally want closure, but it’s not there. Make no mistake, I’ve created a Pulitzer winning novel around the reasons, because I’m a normal human person. But that story is probably part fact, part fiction. I’ll never know.
The absolute truth is that the life journey I’m on requires me to keep taking the next step. I don’t have to understand it, but I have to take it. I’ve realized that when it comes to other people, I must understand that I won’t always understand. I could continue to wrestle the information I have into a cognitive story, but that’s all it would be, a story.
So what do you do with that? How do you shift your mind past a difficult situation when you don’t know the full story and never will, when you don’t understand? There’s no magical answer, but that doesn’t mean you’re powerless in your own narrative. There is value in processing your existing information and emotions.
Get curious about your own ‘what’s’ and ‘why’s.’ What is the emotion you’re feeling, what was your experience, why did you make the choices you made? Examine those feelings and ask what you can learn from them. Understand your own perspective and current narrative. And then? Either you continue to retell your negative narrative, or you create a new one. Take the information and emotions you have and use those to create a story for yourself that extends grace and love, to yourself, and another person.
Hard things happen, relationships fail, and we don’t always understand. But we can make choices to move forward. To frame our experiences from a different mindset. To let ourselves and another off the hook. Not understanding, unresolved feelings, we process them and let them go. Imagine pulling against an immovable object and suddenly you let go. The rush of lightness that overcomes you, that’s what letting go and moving forward is akin to.
There will be things in life we simply don’t understand. What you do with that? It’s your choice. Be brave my dears. We’re on this journey together.
In the midst of an argument a few years ago, the phrase “drawing a line in the sand” was used towards me. Smack.in.the.face. The phrase conjures division, separation, black/white, a dualistic mindset. It feels like “you’re either with me or against me.” Not a phrase that builds relationships.
While waiting for a flight recently, I struck up conversation with the guy next to me. Turns out, we were on the same journey, a quick weekend in Boston and now headed home. But our reasons couldn’t have been more different. Both were with family, but while mine was fun and adventure, his visited his gravely ill grandmother. He told me he didn’t think he was going to be able to go, but his cousin helped at the last moment. When I asked how she was doing, the answer was not well. It appeared she was going to pass away soon. Without a second breath, I found myself saying how fortunate it was he got to see her. “At least you got to be there.”
When I was avidly cycling, my friends and I used to participate in double centuries. 200 miles in one stretch, filled with laughter, camaraderie, lots of food, some pain, and endurance. By the time I was riding the doubles, I’d built up strength and speed. Not Lance Armstrong speed by any stretch, but enough to hold my own. Around mile 150 of the Davis Double, on a hot – I mean, cook an egg on the pavement hot – day, we came upon a fellow cyclist. The community of cyclists participating in these rides is not immense, so it was someone we’d ridden with many times.
At the time I was having my children, I lived in Yosemite, aka, the woods, for those not familiar. I’d grown up there and through serendipitous situations, was living and working there as an adult. Somehow, I got it in my head that I’d have my kids naturally, without pain killers. Maybe it was that I had friends having their kids at home, sometimes in the bathtub. No pain killers seemed like a good middle ground. By and large, I did it. I had a little something with the first, because, well, he was nine pounds and a little complicated. But number two, nada. In truth, I think my body was well designed for it.
Who remembers the children’s book clubs that existed at the same prevalence as Columbia House records? When my children were babies, I aspired to build a vast library of books for them and joined one of the clubs where I could quickly acquire my library for a low, low price. Many of those first books were from Dr. Seuss. In fact, they were many of the same books I read as a child.
Yesterday was spent with my youngest son, Bodie, hanging out in the Bay Area. He’s 25, 26 in a few months and he towers over me…both he and his brother do. As I often do, I think back to when he was a baby, small, not tiny, but I can remember the feeling that washed over me in the first time I held him…pure love. Anyone who’s held their child for the first time likely remembers that feeling. Looking at their tiny face, a reflection of yours, and thinking there was nothing more perfect. The same feelings swelled up in me with each of my boys. They were, they are, perfect. I’ve never hesitated in loving them since that day.
It can be a bit nebulous, leadership. People often assume the title based on a role they hold. A position they’ve aspired to. The pinnacle of a career – leader of people and their charting their own course. Yet, a title alone, a position, is nothing more than that. Being named a leader doesn’t automatically bestow upon you some magical fairy dust where people fall in line behind you. A leader is infinitely more than that.
I was called selfish the other day. It’s one of the worst insults to me, honestly. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I’m certain each of us has the insult that cut us to the core, and that’s the one for me. It’s rolled around in my head a couple days, and I should have known from the beginning it would make it to the page.
If you’ve had children, you likely recall the phrase, “use your words.” During that stage when they’ve begun talking, but are not yet English fluent, a child will revert to the behaviors that got them what they want. They’ll use the primal techniques that they instinctively knew as infants to communicate their needs, crying being at the top of the list. They’ll point, cry…anything but speak…in an effort to get what they want. In the moment, they cannot find the words to communicate what they want or what they’re feeling.