Month: May 2020

understanding sameness

I opened up my facebook feed this morning and was greeted with a post from someone I care about mocking the concept of wearing masks. I felt an immediate and visceral reaction to this message of ridicule. It was potent and defensive, but I wasn’t sure if it was anger or hurt.

Confused, I asked myself: 

Q: Why do people wear masks? 
A: To feel safe and somewhat in control, and to feel like they are protecting those around them. 

Q: So, why make fun? 
A: This is a defensive reaction, perhaps to a dislike or fear of being told what to do, or a simple disagreement in values and beliefs about how the world should operate.

Upon coming to these conclusions I made a comment to my husband about a person’s desire for a mask being similar to a person’s desire for a gun, both of which are related to the need to feel safe and to protect. I went on to say that one of these objects hurts no one, while the other has the potential to hurt so many. My husband began, don’t make the comparison… or some such similar statement that I really can’t remember because I immediately shut down when he started telling me what to do.

Bingo. 

I was in a similarly patterned loop as my friend, who I believe to be a gun-supporter. I got defensive with my shut-down just as she had gotten defensive with her put-down. 

So what is my message, my learning, in this discomfort and realization of sameness? 

It’s that the universe is nudging me to continue to try to look for connections and similarities between me and the people with whom I disagree, both at home and faraway. Where I believe my husband was attempting to lead me, albeit with bossiness, was to the idea that when I engage in further divisiveness (from a place of supposed superiority) I’m not helping to create the connection and understanding I long for.

As I write, I look up and see on my 2020 vision board:

Being receptive to the view of someone we disagree with is no easy task, but when we approach the situation with a desire to understand our differences [and sameness], we get a better outcome.

I want a better outcome. As well as more joy in the process.

Thus, I commit to being receptive. I commit to observing with curiosity my reactions as well as the reactions of others experiencing my reactions. I commit to imagining how and where we might broach conversations that lead to greater understanding. I commit to increasing connectedness.

I also commit to continuing to speak, even if it my speech isn’t perfected.

Work in joyful progress.

For more shelter-in-place interpretations of my pre-Covid 2020 vision board, please visit @katietwitwrites on instagram.

the still, small voice of love

Holy shit. She’s done it again. 

I sat down to prepare for a sophomore conversation call, one in which a guide from the high school meets with my husband, myself and our soon-to-be a Junior son to reflect upon the first half of high school and make goals for the second half. I, of course, had my journal in one hand and a list of questions to contemplate in the other. My son, lounging in front of the TV, had his phone in one hand and a video game controller in the other. I sighed, let him be, and picked up my dinging phone alerting me that new grades had been posted. I don’t always click, but it being so close to the end of the semester and minutes before the reflection call, I did. It wasn’t the course grades that caught my attention, it was the “effort grades”. 

B effort! 

That lit me up. We’d been home for 8 weeks and school has pretty much been his only obligation! I immediately blasted out a text to him saying that I was feeling disgusted and that I’d prefer lower course grades and A effort to this average display of attention. I followed that up with a tattle call to my husband. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of texting a friend to ask if was I being/expecting too much that I snapped back into real time and space and admitted to myself that I had the answers within, and the yuckiness I was feeling and wanting to discharge was in direct relation to the real conflict at hand: the pressure I was putting on him was the same pressure I’ve been trying so desperately to shake off myself. I was literally planting the same voice in his head that I’ve been trying my damnedest to quiet. 

Do more!

Do better!

Prove yourself! 

I deleted the text and opened the zoom call. Our talented guide started our conversation with this poem-prayer by Henri Nouwen:

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, “Prove that you are a good person.” Another voice says, “You’d better be ashamed of yourself.” There also is a voice that says, “Nobody really cares about you,” and one that says, “Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.” But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, “You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.” That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

I really appreciate when the universe puts me in my place so quickly and decisively with her magic ways. (I hear you!) And I recommit myself to solitude, silence and a strong determination to listen — to both gentle and not-so-gentle reminders (this one was gentle, thank you) and to my kids when I pause long enough to ask them questions of the “are you okay with this feedback?” sort.