by Jenny Rose | Oct 6, 2016 | Power
The late John O’Donohue, a wonderful Irish poet and mystic, wrote a book of blessings titled To Bless the Space Between Us. I discovered O’Donohue via Anam Cara, perhaps his best known work, more than ten years ago. This idea of blessing the ground between us has stayed with me, especially this summer as I’ve worked with boundaries. See the first posts in this series here, here, and here.
It’s a beautiful autumn day in Maine, and I find myself alone, which rarely happens. An old stone wall borders one perimeter of our 26 acres here, and I decide to walk it.
The wall is really just a hump of stones now, covered in moss. It runs through thick growth, so there is a lot of dead wood to maneuver around. The neighbor has posted signs on the trees on his side of the wall every few yards, yellow signs saying “No Trespassing.” The relentless message follows me all the way down to the river.
The ferns are golden now, responding to diminishing light. Brush and bracken are a mixture of dried flower heads, sprawling vines and fallen leaves. It’s been very dry, so numerous small stream beds are empty, but I can see where water runs when it’s present. I slither and bushwhack all the way down to the river, where a handy fallen tree makes a bench above the water. The river hardly moves, low and clear, and I sit for a time watching leaves fall onto its surface.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
The ground between one person and another, one property and another, can’t exist unless there are defined boundaries. I appreciate our neighbor’s desire to keep his land inviolate. Even without the signs I wouldn’t trespass, not being that sort, but something about the repeated warning above the old disintegrating wall disturbs me in the context of the patient trees and turning season. The wall, like a hedgerow, is probably home to many. It’s a beautiful boundary, that wall, much more interesting than a fence, and at this point much more organic, too. You might say it’s a beautiful blessing.
Photo by Robert Hickerson on Unsplash
I’ve been in relationships where the ground between us was perceived as a threat, or even a rejection. This particular boundary issue quickly damages connection if I intend to keep that sacred ground between us and the other tries to eliminate it. I don’t want to trespass, but I also don’t want to be trespassed upon. Yet I don’t want to live in an armed fortress. I don’t want the ground between us to be a military zone, seeded with landmines, soaked in blood and tears, noisy, dangerous, ugly and foul. I don’t want to build a fence with glass and razor wire between us. I don’t want the ground between us to be a toxic dump, or filled with shattered shards of broken integrity and betrayal.
Then there are relationships where lip service is paid to the ground between us, but the phenomenon I call boundary creep comes into play. Slowly, inevitably, a tide of invasion inches over the boundary. It might be in the form of noise, or in the form of things like clothing, mail, dirty laundry and personal possessions. It might be in the form of toothpaste in the sink, hair in the drain and grease on the stove. It might be in the form of detritus generated by an addiction, like beer cans, cigarette butts or drug paraphernalia.
I’ve also been in relationships where I’ve tried to make dates with people, with the two-fold intention of being fully present and available at a certain time and place for connection and managing my own time and energy effectively, but this can be very problematic. Some folks are chronically late or intermittent no-shows. Others are highly offended at having to make a date, preferring to have access to me whenever and however they want. Then there are people who only want connection on their terms. I’m not allowed to reach out in any way and can only wait for them to initiate contact and set the boundaries.
When I think about blessing the ground between us, I envision a park, or maybe a garden. A place with trees in it, and birds, and leaves and maybe some moss. I imagine a place we both create and care for, a safe and sacred space in which we experience reciprocal respect and affection. I like the idea of a stone wall or some kind of fence, but I want a gate in it.
Photo by Colin Maynard on Unsplash
At this point in my life, after years and years of confusion and pain around boundaries, I’m finally getting crystal clear. I know what I want, and I know what I don’t want. Observing how people handle boundaries and the ground between us speaks volumes about their priorities, their choices, the state of their integrity and self-esteem, and their level of functioning. Notice I say observation, not listening. Actions are always more telling than words. Someone with broken boundaries is certainly not going to help me maintain mine.
I can’t control what others do with the ground between us, but my choice is to bless it with growth and kindness, respect and safety. I intend my boundaries to be both intact and beautiful. My boundaries have doors and windows and gates so the light of my healthy relationships can bless my life, but those doors and windows and gates can be locked if the need arises.
I am not you and you are not me. Together, we are greater than we are individually. We can choose how to create and decorate our boundaries. We can choose to bless the ground between us.
All content on this site ©2016
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted
by Jenny Rose | Aug 11, 2016 | Connection & Community, Emotional Intelligence, Shadows
Last week I wrote about stories. This week I want to discuss a powerful element embedded in the stories we tell ourselves — the element of expectations.
This subject is too big and complicated for me to address in a single post. It touches on parenting, every aspect of relationship, and really every aspect of our experience, unless we’re Zen masters. Here’s a sample of what other people are saying about expectations.
I don’t know any Zen masters and I’m certainly not one, so for the rest of us unenlightened beings, let’s consider the subject of expectations and how they work to limit us, others and life.
Photo by Paul Bence on Unsplash
Before I go further, a Google search of the term “expectations” will give you page after page of managing work expectations, and all the articles I looked at tell me expectations are necessary, positive and help companies, businesses and corporations be successful. Which means make money. So, for the purposes of this discussion, let’s put aside professional/work-related expectations. Let’s focus on intra and interpersonal expectations. Let’s be human beings instead of consumers and capitalists.
Expectations arise out of our past experience, our dreams, our hopes and fears, our unmet needs, our assumptions and our culture and family. They can be positive or negative. But expectations, like the stories we’ve created, are uniquely ours. We’ve usually made them up in our heads or accepted them from the overculture without question. I don’t suggest expectations are inherently wrong if we remember they’re just part of the stories we’re telling, but the problem is we don’t remember that. We cling to expectations and invest them with great certainty and power. They become our reality. This all happens internally and it doesn’t occur to us to check out what other people hope for or expect. It doesn’t occur to us to agree on terms or have a discussion. We just assume we’re all on the same page.
Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash
Here’s an example from my own life. My parents divorced when I was a child. In subsequent years, as I’ve married and had my own children, there have been references to “family.” What a “family” does or doesn’t do. What “family” means. The thing is, I don’t think Dad means the same thing Mom does when he talks about “family,” and I’m pretty sure neither one of them means what I do when I use the term.
I’ve never had a conversation with either of my parents about this, but I’m curious about their definitions. For each of my parents, “family” implies several expectations or rules of conduct about which I’m clearly ignorant and which I frequently have felt I’ve failed. Furthermore, I disagree with some of their expectations that I am aware of.
Life is full of words like this. Try these on: Parent, son/daughter, wife/husband, partner, friend, lover, teacher, mentor, girl/boyfriend, volunteer, etc., etc. We can define these terms pretty easily, but attached to each is a set of often invisible expectations. They’re very deep, so deep we never think about them. You know exactly what “family” means, right? No question. I know what it means to me. But other members of my family are clearly working with different definitions. So, who gets to decide? Who’s right and who’s wrong?
No one. Everyone.
And that’s not very satisfying, is it? It would be so much easier if someone could be right and someone could be wrong. Then we’d all know, and we’d all expect the same thing(s).
There’s still a problem, though, and that’s the real heart of this post.
Expectations, even if we could all agree on them, are so often limitations.
Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
When we create and cling to expectations of ourselves or life, all our energy and attention is on something we’ve made up or inherited, and that’s so small, compared to the complex, mysterious, terrible, beautiful, enigmatic thing we call life! Our expectations are like a narrow beam of light in a dark universe. We don’t think about all the possibilities we can’t see, all the things we can’t imagine. No, we’re focused on that small beam, and if what it illuminates doesn’t live up to our expectations of self and others, then we’re angry. We break connection. We punish ourselves. We punish others. We blame and shame and try to make events, people, marriages, vacations, new homes, jobs and ourselves be what we expect them to be.
You might have noticed this doesn’t work.
Every parent has their head in their hands at this point!
Now our expectations are a real problem, because we’ve made them so big and powerful we can’t see around them. We can’t step back and consider what is. We can only think about what isn’t. We forget our sense of curiosity and joyous possibility. We only think about how disappointed we feel, how let down we are, how things never work out. We nurse our humiliation and embarrassment about what we’d hoped for, and what other people think of our choices. We make up stories about how we can’t trust people, and we can’t trust life, and we become cynical, bitter and depressed.
We make ourselves and others very, very small.
But we can choose to take the power out of our expectations, just as we can choose to take the power out of our stories. We can search out our expectations and root them up like weeds. We can take our focus away from unmet expectations and look instead at what is present, what is happening, and dream about what might be possible. We can accept our expectations are about us, not anyone or anything else. If they’re not working, we’re the ones with the power to change them.
We have enormous power in one another’s lives. If every single one of us extended to just one other person the question, “What would you like to do?” instead of “You will…” or “You should…” or “You can’t…” what would the world be like? What if you were ten times bigger than the son/daughter/parent/spouse/lover/partner/friend others expect you to be? That doesn’t mean you have super powers. It means you unchain yourself from the limitation of expectations, yours and everyone else’s.
One of the greatest gifts I ever received was this statement: “I want you to be everything you are and nothing you aren’t.” What a tender, respectful, loving way to hold another human being and life! And the best thing about it? We can say it to ourselves. We can start where we have the most power, in the place where no one can stop us or limit us. I say it to you, now, whoever you are, wherever you are. No expectations. No limits.
Live everything you are, be everything you are and nothing you aren’t.
Pass it on.
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
All content on this site ©2016
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted
by Jenny Rose | Aug 4, 2016 | Connection & Community, Emotional Intelligence
Stories. How many stories can you tell about your life?
Story has always been deeply embedded in the human experience. Every piece of art tells a story. We read, watch television, go to movies, listen to the news, fall in love with music. Stories, all.
Stories teach, entertain, connect, inspire and guide us.
Stories are prisons and torture chambers. They brainwash and manipulate. They can be powerfully limiting.
The paradox of story lies in the power we give it.
Think about a story from your own life. Something painful. Likely it’s a story you’ve told yourself many times. It’s important. It’s part of who you are and how you understand yourself. It’s a place from which you look at the world. It’s absolutely True. You know. You were there. It was such a crippling experience you can’t ever, ever forget.
Stories can’t happen in a void, so there’s an event of some kind, an action, a word, a relationship, other characters in your story.
Photo by Takahiro Sakamoto on Unsplash
Let’s say your story is about four people who spend an hour together on a walk. In that hour everybody sees, smells and hears, thinks and feels different things. After that walk, and maybe for years afterward, each of those four people can tell a story about that day, that walk, that experience. Every one of those stories is partly true. Every one of those stories is inadequate and incomplete. The truest story is the one all four people tell together. If one person’s story is refused, denied, disbelieved or lost, all four people have lost something important out of that hour of their lives. They’ve lost an opportunity for understanding, for compassion, for connection and for becoming just a little bit bigger.
The thing about story is that we create it. Something happens. We have an experience. We have feelings, like mad, glad, sad or scared. We have thoughts about our feelings. We make up a story. We tell it to ourselves over and over again as we try to make sense of our experience, or recover from some hurt. We believe our story to the point that we refuse to consider changing it. We behave as if our story is True.
Photo by SHTTEFAN on Unsplash
Now we have a story that imprisons us. The story has all our power. We hurt people, break relationships and viciously defend our story. We will kill people, including ourselves, to maintain our story. Not only that, others must accept our story in its entirety. They must never question it, add to it or take away from it. Our story becomes us. A threat to our story becomes a threat to our life.
We’ve made something up, chosen to believe in it and now it rules us.
A lot of people talk about truth and lies as though one is black and one is white. As a storyteller, a writer and a human being, I question that. What is truth, really? If I was walking with you on that day and I saw a beautiful grass snake and you saw a dangerous serpent, which one of us is lying? What is the truth? I was charmed, you were horrified. So, I must be a sensitive scientist type with big glasses and a mouthful of Latin. And you’re a beautiful, sexy woman with big boobs and brown eyes who needs to be taken care of in the terrifying outdoors.
There. That’s my story. I’m sticking to it. Don’t you dare try to give me a different version.
See what I mean?
Isn’t the truth that two people saw a snake and had two different experiences and sets of feelings around it? Don’t we all have histories, fears, beliefs, prejudices, expectations and filters through which we experience life? Are yours right and mine wrong? Are mine right and yours wrong?
Can’t we allow room for everyone to experience what they experience?
Some people lie, deliberately and with intent. We all know people like that. We learn quickly not to trust them.
Some people distort. They’re caught up in their story about themselves, about the world, about others. They’ve been deeply damaged and wounded, or they struggle with addiction, or they have health problems, or they take medication, or they struggle with mental illness. Am I prepared to call them liars?
No. But I recognize the danger of some of their stories.
Does investment in a distorted story mean the storyteller is not a valuable person worthy of love and compassion? I hope not. I’ve my own set of distorted stories. I think we all have.
Other, very dangerous people deliberately manipulate with story. They invalidate yours in favor of theirs. They tell you you’re wrong, you didn’t understand, you’re too sensitive, you’re too dramatic, you’re too crazy; you’re hateful, bigoted, disloyal, a liar. They tell you your story didn’t happen, that they didn’t hit you, even though there’s blood in your mouth.
So what do we do about story — ours and everyone else’s?
Maybe the most important thing is to be aware that much of what’s happening in our head is a story. It might be partly true. It might not be. It’s certainly part of something larger than our point of view. Our feelings are ours and we need to honor them, but our thoughts about our feelings can become a real problem.
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
We could ask others about their stories. We could be open, curious, nonjudgmental, compassionate, respectful and prepared to be enriched by someone’s perceptions and experiences. We could, in short, build healthy connection.
If we’re holding tight to a story that hurts us, angers us, or is otherwise destructive, we could go to other characters in the story, tell them how we feel and ask for help understanding the situation.
We can build trust and respect with ourselves. We can claim the power and dignity to form our own opinions about others, based on our own observations and experience, and decide when to build connection and when to limit it. We can refrain from repeating destructive stories to or about others. We can take responsibility for our own rigidity and blind spots; our intolerance, injustice and poor communication skills, and own that we might make mistakes in judgement.
Photo by James Pond on Unsplash
We can be wary and watchful of people who impose their stories on us. Some people use story like a hammer and chisel, relentlessly splitting connection and relationship. In the end they hurt themselves the most, but many a relationship has been lost because of this kind of behavior.
We can pay attention to red flags such as feeling confused, feeling torn, feeling overwhelmed, feeling exhausted by drama, and feeling dragged down or being asked to keep destructive secrets. Healthy people in our lives who truly love us will never try to split us from others or force us to make a “them or me” choice. Healthy people do not share destructive personal stories about others publicly, nor do they tolerate or enable this kind of behavior. Healthy people communicate honestly, directly and clearly and recognize the ineffectiveness of black-and-white thinking.
In the end, our only power lies within the circumference of our own lives. If we want others to give us a chance to speak when someone tells a distorted story about us, we must do the same for them. If we want to be heard, understood and treated with respect and compassion, we must extend those to others. If we’re hurt and angry, we must find appropriate and effective ways to talk about that, either with a professional or with others in our story. We can’t control what others say and believe about us. We can only live the most authentic lives possible and hope that our actions and words speak for themselves. We can be responsible for our own stories.
For more on the power of story, here’s another blog you might be interested in. Same subject, different writer. It’s titled Who Are You?
Also, here’s a link to a remarkable teacher, Byron Katie, who asks, “Who are you without your story?” I highly recommend her.
Do your stories about yourself limit you? Do your stories about others limit them? Can you consider another version of one of your stories? What needs to happen for you to revise one destructive story you’ve created?
All content on this site ©2016
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted
