More Recovery

We’ve recently considered how not living up to either our parents’ or our own expectations of ourselves can damage us, and how to recover. Equally serious is the opposite predicament we often create, that of blaming our parents for not living up to our expectations of them—as though we had a right to expect anything of them. Of course expectations are just unborn resentments, and so we tend to blame those who raised us for our problems [shortcomings, character defects, inadequacies, whatever]. Then we need therapy, counseling, Gestalt work, detoxification, prayer, or some combination to launch into recovery. We need to see that it is not circumstances, but how we choose to react to circumstances, that forms our character and dictates our behavior. It’s not what happens, but our perception of what happens, that does damage. The good news is that we can actually learn to use tools to clear out the wreckage of the past. What a revelation! How long, painful, and expensive this discovery can be—but how delightfully worth it to be free of that monkey of unforgiveness on our backs! You do know that forgiving, our most critical tool, isn’t to benefit the other guy, it’s for us—don’t you?

What's Driving My Bus?

What’s driving my bus now? Do I act and feel at peace with God’s creation, or am I still fighting the bus-driver?

Often my growth has been frozen by the “either-or” paradigm. I’ve been seduced by an overpowering urge to dichotomize. However, as I mature I have begun to appreciate that to the extent that I regard God’s entire creation from such a basic two-valued orientation, my perspective is limited, my viewpoint judgmental, and my arrogance risks becoming pathetically transparent. If I can get my self-centeredness out of the way, I must concede that most things are seldom either totally black or white, short or tall, easy or hard, approvable or disapprovable, right or wrong, true or false, even good or evil. There are grays.
Accepting this multi-valued orientation causes me to cerebrate, to reëvaluate, to expand my horizons, to understand life in many spheres as infinitely more complex than I prefer. It also requires some degree of humility, because no longer may I cling to the comforting assurance that my opinions are the only correct ones, and therefore everyone else is automatically wrong. It is truly sobering to realize that others may have as good a handle on Pilate’s “truth” than that of The Great All-American “I Am.” Or at the very least, “their” way just might be as valid, workable, or productive. And the real biggie for me: does this wider horizon apply to any of the sacred cows of inviolable biblical injunctions?
My former world-view may not always have been conscious, but as long as I were to cling to it, that’s what would drive my bus. When I interiorize and begin to work with the broader perspective, however, there are new consequences. I become automatically more tolerant of others — ALL others. I lose the anxiety—the drivenness— of always having to be right, and the tyranny of needing to be error-free. Then old absolutes will no longer drive me to distraction or threaten my very sanity, because I see them in their absurdity and no longer fear being sucked back into my old prejudices.

What to do? Stay aware.Talk with others on the same path. Seek spiritual counselling. Keep open my mind, soften my heart, and busy the direct prayer-line to the Creator of all. Is this an eiphany?

Emotions

How many times have I prayed Eucharistic Prayer C, asserting that God has “blessed us with memory, reason, and skill”? The other day I realized that God has given us another function of our mind, that of feeling. Not fingertips’ detecting rough surfaces, or temperatures, or physical pain—but emotions. This area of cerebral function is missing from animals, or immature at best. How satisfying it is to FEEL love, joy, contentment, anticipation—all the pleasant emotions! It’s also a good thing to feel fear, anger, stress, and other unpleasant feelings, for at least we know we’re alive and human, and can learn from them, work through them to become more whole.
I have been blessed to have been loved by two exceptional women in my 85 years. How sterile it would have been to simply recognize their usefulness to my personal economy, and missed the passion, the camaraderie, yes—the “warm fuzzies” that added to my memory, reason, and skill. Not just the intellectual realization of feelings, but the feelings themselves! And I’ve discovered that to become mature, I MUST learn to value my emotions as God-given. A prime example: I figure I’m about as good as how well I’ve learned to love. There are many stories of folks on their death bed who lamented that they hadn’t told their family members how much they loved them; how many have you heard of who wished that they had spent more time at the office?Yet I remember being taught as the ideal for which one should reach was being productive. No one even hinted that loving was the far higher virtue!
We’re blessed with memory, reason, skill, and the ability to feel—praise God!