Someone made an unkind remark about me recently, unaware that I was in earshot. Luckily, having just given my 7-year-old a speech about the importance of a thick skin and using her "ignoring skills" when people say mean things, I knew exactly how to handle it. I decided swiftly that the world is full of mean people, took the comment completely to heart, and proceeded to plan my relocation to another part of the world, perhaps a small, uninhabited island someplace. On account of being a grown-up and everything.
In truth, nowadays I am capable, at least some of the time, of letting something like that roll right off my back. On days when things are going reasonably well and I'm feeling ok, I know not to dwell on something so minor in the scheme of things. Still, on this day, the words made their mark and brought me back to times in my life when I didn't fit in and knew it, when I felt inferior. Surprising and unsettling, how fast and how deep something can get under our skin.
Yesterday, I ran a therapy group in a corrections setting, and we were talking about risk factors for substance abuse. As sometimes happens during these discussions, we would start out talking in generalities (such as, "experiencing or witnessing domestic violence might be a risk factor for substance abuse"), and then someone will cite a specific instance from their own life, as in, "I remember I told my mother that my stepfather was abusing us, and she didn't believe me and beat me up for 'causing trouble'. Could that be related to substance abuse?" Yesterday, in one of those kinds of stunned moments, I found myself thinking, Whoa. The world really sucks.
Sometimes life's cruelties and atrocities seem mammoth. Sometimes the uglier aspects of life that I hear in my work as a therapist blends with my remembering or processing of some of my own ugly experiences. Sometimes I am paying so much attention to those things that I see the world as a mine field I have to traverse whether I want to or not.
But if I really look, there's so much of the good stuff around us, too. Just last weekend, I had the pleasure of watching my 7-year-old throw candy in a parade-- twice, I watched her run from our parade group to personally hand candy to the one child in a small group who didn't scramble fast enough to collect any. Her kind-heartedness often stuns me as she navigates her young life.
A recent Facebook posting sought to locate a cat's owner to say the cat had been hit but was rushed to the vet by the passerby who posted. The person wanted the owner to know that everything possible was being done to save the cat.
Walking toward my office today, I stopped to study and smell a gorgeous azalea bush overflowing with enormous purple blossoms which were hidden within tightly-closed buds the last time I passed by.
And so today's blog, with what must be the oldest message on earth. In this life, there are many good things and many bad things. We magnify whichever part we focus on. It feels infinitely better to appreciate azaleas and smile when your 7-year-old is on a candy mission.
As for the rest of it all, I release it from my preoccupations, if not from my awareness, in the moment I finish this sentence. In the instant I press "Post"...
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