When We Feel Each Word We Utter Holds Another Person in Its Hands: In Making Ourselves Real to Others, We Become More Real to Ourselves

We all know those moments when we so want to talk to a friend. It might be with one particular person; or it might be a cry to just talk with someone, anyone who cares or knows us, and who will listen. There are moments when we realize something we didn’t say, or regret saying. There are moments when something is just turning over and over inside us, shaking the nerve pathways. And we yearn to reach out. There are moments when we wonder, who is it I can talk to that will understand?

 

But I wonder⎼ this drive can be so compelling. What is it we think we gain from sharing? What do we feel will happen or change by the act of opening our mouths and speaking? I doubt it’s just a release of pent-up emotion that we crave. And it must be something more than simply sharing with someone important to us something that’s important.

 

I’ve had some medical issues lately. And part of me wants to keep it all to myself, so in my own eyes and the eyes of the world, I appear healthy. But the questions about how to understand my health abound. What does this pain mean? Is there a diagnosis? The not-knowing can be frightening. A definitive explanation or label, even a scary one, can provide such relief.

 

And this is so true for all that goes on inside of us. When we look inward, hear a thought, feel a sensation or feeling, how do we know with any surety what it means? It’s so difficult to make sense of all that goes on inside us. We can feel our heart beating slowly or quickly.  We can feel tension in our belly, a rawness in our gut, heat in my palm. But there are no bold printed signs on my inner roadways saying, “here I am” and “this is truth.” Our inner world is so vast and elusive⎼ and tricky. Anything we experience can be interpreted in so many ways.

 

And what about the strong impulse to share whatever news we have, about our health or any event in our lives? How much should we share? Our state of health is part of our identity. When we talk, we create a perspective on who we are. In a way, we try to shape reality itself. We select words, images, and create stories with ourselves as the main character. We become the hero or heroine of one version of our lives. This gives our struggles meaning and importance.

 

But to select, we limit and distort. We describe the indescribable; we create walls or boundaries around what is naturally boundaryless. And we think of these boundaries as points of distinction, or separation, even isolation. So, how do we speak so it serves us instead of isolates us?

 

By creating a story of a self, we create something another person can relate to. By selecting a feeling or experience to share, we give another person a chance to enter our experience, to climb inside with us. Boundaries also create points of contact. A hand not only touches but can be touched.

 

And as I said earlier, our inner lives can be so fuzzy and confusing, so vast and limitless. Saying something about ourselves to another person is in a way a personal experiment. How we interpret our inner signals and outer events is crucial. We try one story and see if it holds up and feels right. Not only in the eyes and mind of the other person, but how it feels in our own mouth. We use conversations with others to make the fuzzy clear and give reality to ourselves. In making ourselves real to others, we become more real to ourselves.

 

But we need to be careful here….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

What Feeds The Waters of Heart: The Care We All Need

I woke up one recent Sunday morning with chest pain. As I got out of bed, the pain gradually grew until there was almost nothing else left in my mind and body but pain. Each breath was a question. Most of us know what’s it like when we have some physical ailment and don’t know the cause; and thus, we don’t know what to do about it. The not-knowing becomes an additional mountain of pain. We don’t know how serious our situation is. We don’t know if we should go to the ER. I would’ve called a doctor, but it was Sunday⎼ none were available. Was this IT? Was my life at stake? Could I die?

 

My wife and I were hesitant to go to the ER because we’d been there earlier in the week and had spent hours without getting any clear answers. But pain can overwhelm doubt and provide its own dictates. We went.

 

The drive was both horrible and hilarious. It was early in the morning. I wanted my wife to drive through stop signs and redlights. She wouldn’t. She said we’d get a ticket. I said if any cop stopped us, they’d escort us to the ER. I turned on the flashers. She turned them off. We laughed; we wanted to cry, or I did, but didn’t. It would hurt too much. I was never so glad to see the mechanical doors of the ER.

 

I had called the ER before leaving home, and maybe that helped get us in sooner. Still, it took hours before they could get a hint about what was going on with me and do anything at all to reduce the pain, let alone begin treatment. I wound up being admitted for 5 days. And this changed my whole perception of hospitals.

 

I’m lucky; I still have good health insurance from my former job. My room was on the fourth floor of a community hospital that overlooked a lake carved out of steep hills by ancient glaciers. At each different time of day, and differently each day, the quality of light changed. At 5:00 am, amidst the thrill of mutedly hearing through the thick walls so many birds greet the morning, the trees and hillsides appeared in the lake as cloudy representatives of themselves, vague mysterious hints of who they were. In the afternoon, maybe at 3:00 pm, the light was stark. The reflections, if there were any, were clear. They tricked my eyes; I could almost see the reflection as the reality.

 

Each day, I walked the halls as much as I could. And as I did so, I realized I was learning lessons I never anticipated. I was learning respect, for one thing. Not just an obvious respect, of not talking too loudly, not disturbing others at rest. But a respect for a shared humanity. This was a unique situation. All around me, the normally hidden was exposed. I heard people cry or shout out in pain. I heard buzzers ring for nurses. I heard a team of doctors explain to my roommate their diagnosis and need for possible life-saving surgery. Luckily, everything turned out fine. Pain and suffering were right there for all of us. Our mortality was right there. And it was accepted, let in, so it could be faced. So, it could be admitted.

 

And care, compassion. This, too, surrounded us. It was the core of the place, despite the profit motive, despite insurance company dictates, rigid procedures made to protect the hospital and caregivers at least as much as patients. Despite an often-formulaic education that made it difficult at times for doctors and nurses to see me, the individual human in the patient. Sometimes profession got in the way of avocation. But the compassion was there, with both doctors and nurses. Patients learn to care for others from the nurses, to care for each other. I had a roommate and after 2 days we were sharing phone numbers. When we care, our perception and thinking opens. We see more.

 

And I noticed something weird as I walked. My mind was in a way like the lake. Amidst all the pain, a pain that felt unendurable at times, there was this quiet base. Just as I could see the beauty of the lake even as I felt in myself confusion and fear, there was this base of sheer knowingness in everything perceived or thought. There was an awareness without pain. That felt as real, as immediate as life could get. That made everything possible, all of this, all of what was frightening, what was hopeful, and what was joyous.

 

And who knows how this happened, but in the morning of the second or third day at the hospital my wife was helping me wash and change clothes. I was trying to put on shorts, and for some reason I felt incredibly astonished that I had 2 legs. Can you believe it? I had 2 legs? And I started laughing. My wife thought I was going nuts and asked what was going on. I tried to explain about having two legs being so much fun. And that my shorts, too, had 2 openings for legs. A perfect fit. And this was the most amazing thing in the world. And then she, too started laughing, giggling crazily, which made it very difficult for me to get my shorts on. It was a breaking or waking point, maybe, for us in dealing with the whole situation.

 

And it wasn’t drugs laughing. Some might say I sounded like I was high on drugs. But for various reasons, I can’t take painkillers and don’t do recreational drugs. Maybe this was the high, the delight that naturally inhabits the waters of mind but which we don’t notice often enough. Maybe it was just being absurdly tired or feeling the absurdity of the situation. Maybe we both just needed a great laugh to relieve the great stress….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Sitting In Silence

Can you sit still for 15 minutes and just think, without getting up or turning to a distraction, a phone, a book, a pen, music—or something shocking? A study recently reported by NPR says that most of us can’t. Besides asking people to just sit, alone, the study included a little twist. It allowed people who felt bored or incapable of just sitting to deliver a physical shock to themselves. The result: 70% of men and 20% of women could not sit for 15 minutes without shocking themselves, some repeatedly, despite the pain of the shocks. With the women subjects who didn’t shock themselves, researchers were not clear if the women were better at sitting still or better at not shocking themselves (or both? something else?).

 

Why is this? The study could only make conjectures about that. How do we want to understand this information? Does it mean that we are so dependent on media or on distractions that when we try to be without them, we can’t take it? Are we habituated to our media? Or is this evidence that most of us are not comfortable with ourselves? Maybe there are too many shadows lying in wait in the mind that people feel they can’t or don’t want to face? Or are we just uneducated about how to live in our own heads, or of the role of the mind in creating our sense of the world?

 

In our world today, not only are we bombarded with messages and pressures to keep up with the latest technology, we feel that doing so makes us appear more important. The busier we look, the more important we feel. Being constantly connected means people value you. The ping of the cell phone is an affirmation. So, especially for young people who grow up with digital media, being disconnected can mean being less valuable.

 

I think this experiment, as the authors themselves indicate, invites us to study our own thinking and experiencing. Other people’s answers won’t really help us. And we don’t need only ideas of why this might be true but a truth tested in our lives and feelings. If we can’t be with ourselves, who can we be with? Schools need to join in this self-study. Do we want to raise a generation of people who need an Ap or GPS to find themselves? With increased awareness, we feel less driven. Media becomes the car, not the driver.

 

Think of a time that you could do nothing but wait. Waiting is not the same as just sitting by yourself for 15 minutes, but in both you might start counting moments. When you wait in line to buy something, for example, you have this idea: “I have to buy this new ipod. When I get it, I will be thrilled, happy.“ Or: “I just want the movie tickets already. I just want to get her in the theatre, so we can sit and…” Or you’re waiting for news or for the next text. In any of these situations, you feel suspended in time. You have an image or idea of a future you, when you have whatever it is you are waiting for. And there is this other you, defined by what you’re not, by what you don’t have or what you lack. In fact, you are suspended not in time but between two ideas. You are taken out of time into a mere idea of time. Or maybe not suspended but enclosed in a box constructed of ideas taped shut with emotion. This is suffering.

 

So study or deconstruct what you think and feel when your cell phone pings or calls to you. You might think that these feelings come with the phone, but they come with you. You are the being who feels and thinks. And notice how your culture speaks of the value of media. Notice each ad on television, each time a phone appears in a movie. Notice if there are messages about being alone. And then notice the indifference of a tree or the breeze. Does the tree need to send a text to be noticed? When you focus on the feel of a gentle breeze on your face, do you still think about your phone? What is deepest about your phone is your collection of ideas and feelings about it.

 

Or you might think, ah, a 15 minute respite. I have nothing I have to do. Great. And if you interpret the situation as a moment of freedom from work or whatever, a moment to just relax, then yes, that’s wonderful. But is that what actually occurs when you put away your phone?

 

So, just sit. Pick someplace where it is easy to sit without slouching and you can be mentally awake. Maybe close your eyes so you can better notice your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and images. What comes up for you as you just sit? All you have to do is notice. You don’t need to add anything to the noticing. There’s no need to judge the quality or value of any of the thoughts or feelings, or judge yourself for letting them pass through your mind. Just witness what’s there for you and be open to yourself, kind. If you are open, the thoughts and feelings will arise and pass more clearly. Witness even the judgments as you watch clouds passing by. And notice, also, the sun when the clouds are gone, when there are no thoughts. By notice, I don’t mean note, like write a note with your mind, or bother to remember. Just be aware. Notice the stillness when the sky is vast, blue and cloudless. Patiently, calmly, notice whatever arises, as if your mind was that vast blue space. What is important is your patient interest, your awareness of your life unfolding. Now, just sit with that calm, still awareness

 

When you sit alone, just notice the thoughts or sensations. Let them be just the clouds in the vast sky, or the universe noticing what is arising in itself. The thoughts will then wink out, and what will be left is a universe of awareness silently enjoying itself.