People Pleasing

People Pleasing

Last week I had an interaction with someone I know marginally. The conversation started innocently enough as she asked me a pretty straightforward question. Then something changed, her already frenetic energy amped up and she began to talk in spiraling accusations aimed at those not present mixed with what seemed to be gossipy judgment. As I watched her talk I realized I wasn’t going down this path with her. I knew she wanted a partner in her toxic verbal dance party but my dance card was full. After a few minutes of unsuccessful hooks being thrown my way, she stopped, took a breath and said, “I guess I just need to ask you a question…”

A large part of my adolescent and young adult life was consumed by trying to figure out how to get people to like me. I have spent exhaustive hours trying to present myself in an agreeable manner to any group I might be interacting with. Of course, no two groups are the same so this people pleasing behavior caused endless personality shape shifting or at the very least taking others cues to interact in a less than healthy way.

I believe my behavior can be traced to a mix of my general personality type and growing up in an unpredictable home environment. My shape shifting abilities were a survival mechanism. Need me to be happy go lucky? Sure! Oh, we are sad and angry at the world. I can do that too! Now depressed? Ok. Wait, professional and unemotional? You got it. None of these feelings were actually my own, only projections of what my home life demanded.

I took these dysfunctional, yet useful, tools with me as I entered high school. I would watch the other kids and take cues and do what was necessary to be liked. As I entered adulthood these tools were translated into lack of boundaries or rather, allowing people’s projections to alter my interactions with them. There have been points when people have said out right rotten things to me and I took it just to keep things copacetic. I could keep up facades for a period of time, not share what I really felt or thought just to keep the peace and to try to insure people liked me. Ultimately, it never worked for very long. All of that repressing of my own truth would explode out in tantrums, slander, and unbridled fits of rage or any mix of these.

Only recently have I really realized that all that people pleasing was for naught. When I took a step back it struck me that I actually didn’t like those people who I wanted so desperately to like me! Not that they are bad people but they aren’t people who really matter in my life. This is not to say I am going to follow the credo of, “To hell with it I am going to act, say and do whatever I want!”  Rather, I am going to continue to practice living into my own truth and filling my dance card with those who bring love, light and depth to my soul. The rest can just ask me questions.

Transactions

Transactions

We are currently in the process of refinancing our mortgage and found out that the previous title company didn’t do their job. Our belief of course was that an agreement was made and expectations were set and those expectations were supposed to be carried out in exchange for payment, a transaction. That didn’t happen. The transaction failed.

Our society is based on transactions. Whether involving money or not, we live in a constant state of give and take, expected input and output, and predictable responses to any given situation. All human relationships are like this it seems, even when it appears that nothing is being gained or given in an interaction, when one looks deeper there is always some sort of transaction.

I’ve thought a lot about transactions this week and I think one of the big problems with religion has been people placing the human practice of transactions onto the Divine. The whole simplistic notion that God expects certain “goodness” for admission to heaven and any deviation could land you in hell has probably driven more people from church than anyone could count. My guess is that people on some intuitive level know the Divine does not work like this. And if God is indeed a scorekeeper than quite frankly to hell with it! I wonder if organized religions’ insistence on transactional relationships with God has contributed to the “spiritual not religious” movement. Spirituality leans toward transcendent versus transactional and the appeal is clear.

However, it has been my understanding that the Divine does rely on transactions but not the kind that insists you circumcise all the males in your family. Rather, my experience has been an exchange of love and grace, or at least I would like to think of it as an exchange. My hope is that God benefits from my love and grace too. Perhaps God could care less what I or any other human does yet is somehow always ready to love with abandon.

Of course I am not sure of anything. I just hope God isn’t a crappy title company.

Checkmarks

                                                                Checkmarks

Like many people, when I was in college, I had a plan in my mind as to how my life was supposed to unfold. It was predictable if not cliche. I would graduate from college, start a career, get married, buy a house and have a bunch of kids. Each step being a large checkmark on my to-do list of life. Check, check, check... Each successive accomplishment being met with less a feeling of achievement and more of an impatient push to the next box that needed checking. My early adulthood was more about blind striving than it was about true enjoyment, patient discernment, or thoughtful reflection.

This is how it is for many in our culture. We follow the narrative that was contrived for us and sold to us. Not that this is a bad thing. Expectations for how people should lead their lives allows for communities to form and cultures to remain relatively stable. A good thing.
A problem arises, however, when all the check boxes are filled. Degrees are earned, vows are exchanged, mortgages are signed and families are completed.

Then what?

The narrative ends.

I suppose investment firms make arguments that one must save for one's retirement. So keep working and invest in that IRA!

Then what?

The narrative ends.

In our culture you are as good as dead or at least obsolete.

I think this dead-end cultural narrative is what insights many a mid-life crisis. Good for sales of Corvettes and cosmetic surgery, yet maybe not so good for sustained happiness. Even if a full blown mid-life crisis doesn't ensue, our cultural dead-end narrative definitely nets a phenomena of middle aged people floundering about in almost an adolescent-like state (myself included). Oh, what to do now that all my boxes are checked? The only natural indicator being to go back to the start, to one's adolescence when we are still emerging into ourselves. We grasp for answers in the way we did in our youth and when we find none, we numb out or act out. Alcohol, shopping, gambling, extra marital affairs, the list goes on.

This summer while I walked through Ireland I was happy to partially find an inroad to the next chapter in my narrative. It is simple really, I discovered that at this point I don't have to do anything. As in I don't need any checkmarks or to-do lists for my life. I can wait and see what comes. It is okay for me to not have a grand plan because I trust something will come or maybe it won't, and that's okay too. I know this seems counter culture but the nice thing about having all my previous boxes checked and having successfully completed the cultural narrative is that now I can create my own story as it comes.

And all I have to do is wait.

Blisters

Blisters

There is a rhythmic pace while walking a pilgrimage. The steps seem to melt into one another and a trance-like state permeates the experience. The weight of the pack becomes non-existent yet in an odd way palpably obvious with vacillating thoughts of, “Oh, dear God take this weight from my body, “ to “I don’t feel the heaviness of the pack. I must be getting used to it.” Evidence that each side of my personality was trying to make sense of the experience.

As in life the pain of walking the path was mixed with the comfort of healing. On the second day of the walk my feet began to blister and I was blessed with healers. Those sores on my heels developed unexpectedly given my boots were well broken-in and I had completed many a practice hike. Each morning on the pilgrimage, a sort of make shift triage area was set to address the aches, sprains, bruises and scrapes of the group. Healers emerged to assist those other travelers with their weak spots. The rawness that had developed on the backs of my feet were prepped, bandaged and wrapped. A couple of days into this morning routine I began to realize the process of dressing my wounds was really a ritual. Hands were washed, supplies were gathered and a mere glance signaled to me it was time to start. The space felt sacred despite the milling about of others. And at times the odd body mechanics involved in getting my foot in the proper position was awkward to say the least.  As the ritual unfolded, I would focus on the healer’s hands; slow, confident and calming. It became a sort of morning meditation or prayer for healing and hope for another day of safe walking.

 I accepted the healer’s healing.

I have worked hard over the last several years to heal not from wounds developed from too many miles on the trail but wounds that have been collected over the course of my life. Some of these wounds were inflected deeply and needed time to heal and still leave significant scarring. Others were more like flesh wounds, superficial yet wide and at times equally as painful as the deep ones. The trouble with these sorts of wounds is if you don’t bandage them correctly they begin to fester and compound. Sooner or later the ignored or mishandled emotional injuries take their toll and a systemic infection takes over. And so it was with me, years of not tending to my feelings netted a sort of emotional sepsis leaving me in a stupor of outbursts, anger, and depression.

It was at this point that I reached out for healing. My triage area was set up, healers emerged, sacred space was created, and rituals developed. Just as when my feet were getting tended to, the process of emotional healing was at times uncomfortable, even painful and almost always awkward but I tried to stay focused on the slow, confident calmness of the healers.

While walking the pilgrimage I realized healing and wholeness has arrived. And perhaps more importantly that I need to accept the healthy me and honor the work I have done to get here.  At times the seductive nature of my wounds creep up and I find myself with the temptation to hold onto old hurts or, more damaging, the role of martyr, wallowing in my own brokenness. In so many ways I can see myself in other people who define themselves by their victimhood. The pilgrimage allowed me to acknowledge reliving hurts and reopening wounds is not a space I want to get stuck in and more significantly it is okay to let it go.

I’ve accepted the healer’s healing.

My feet are nearly back to their pre-pilgrimage condition. I don’t miss that pack or the incessant walking but on occasion I notice I drop into that trance-like state and I am back on the trail feeling the rhythm of the pilgrimage. A sense of raw calmness remains along with a tender wholeness that I will need to continue to nurture as I try to make a little more sense of the experience.

Vacations Are Not Pilgrimages

Rob and I went for an early morning swim today sans children. The waves were calm and the temperature of both the air and water was perfectly non-existent. The briny water buoyed us as we watched the sun rise from behind the far off mountains. I commented that I didn't want to go home. Rob responded with, "I'm ready to go home. I know this can't last forever and that's okay." 

Indeed, vacations are meant to end. At best they are wonderful diversions from one's "normal" life. And if a vacation were indeed your life you would need to take a vacation from it! A never ending circle I suppose. 

Although vacations have a terminus point, as they should, pilgrimages don't. While hiking through Ireland earlier this summer it became apparent to me pretty early on that a pilgrimage is really just a microcosm of ordinary life. The walking itself can be difficult, monotonous and frankly at times boring. There are no museums, tours, snorkeling or any other kind of distraction out in the mountains. Just me and all my demons waiting to show up and reflect themselves off the other pilgrims. Of course all their demons showed up too. 

Yet, just as I felt done with the whole experience I would round a corner and be encountered with a breathtaking view or another traveler would say something profound or amazing or maybe something as simple as a sheep would be in my path reminding me that goodness in life is often simple. So, even though life can be difficult, painful and complicated by others and myself it is only a matter of time before something wholly wonderful will occur. 

As we make our final trip home today, I too am happy to be going home. Our vacation is over but our pilgrimage is not. 

Children and The Heart of My Pilgrimage

I always have a hard time traveling without my children. Of course the logistics of being child free tends to be smoother and the expense is less but when I am without them an empty, almost lost feeling fills me. I've always known this but this summer my need to have my kids with me has been highlighted. 

My pilgrimage to Ireland was the first time was away from my children for an extended period of time for recreational purposes. I felt a void throughout. At every turn during the 100 mile hike, I would see something I wished my kids could experience with me. "Oh, Allison would love that!" Or,"David would think that was funny!" Alas, I had to enjoy these sights solo. 

Our family pilgrimage to Mexico has been much different. I've relished watching our children take in the sights, sounds and smells. The immersion into another culture has been a great experience for all of us. I've especially enjoyed watching the kids start using Spanish and making playground friends with the locals. My heart is full. 

Some might think my attachment to my children is a sort of co-dependency but I would disagree. I wonder if the way I feel about my kids is just a slight peek into the heart of the divine. Perhaps God wants to watch all of  creation experience life they way I ache for my children to share my experiences. 

After Pains: Some Initial Thoughts on Pilgrimage

After Pains: Some Initial Thoughts on Pilgrimage

Our second child was born with the help of an induced labor. I won’t go into the specifics of why I made the choice to use a Pitocin drip to get my labor started but at the time it seemed the most sensible thing to do. I arrived at the hospital on the scheduled day and went through the steps to get my contractions going. Although I was told induced labors were more painful than naturally occurring ones, I still chose to opt out of any pain relief offered. I made the decision to place myself in a situation I knew would be painful and a lot of work with the hope that I would come out the other side with a healthy baby and a sense of accomplishment.

As predicted based on my previous birth, the labor was fast and hard and when our son emerged and was placed on my belly, my only words were, “I wanna do that again!” I was euphoric and the sight of his strawberry red head only made my heart swell more. Then, the after pains started; a hurt I had never experienced before. I could barely breathe through the rhythmic clenching of my uterus. I was unable to sit up or talk. My whispered voice begged for something, anything to take away the ungodly pain. Relief came in the form a pill. I finally settled in with my baby.

In these days after returning from Ireland, I wonder when my relief from the after pains of immersing myself on a pilgrimage will come. I am drained physically and I feel my soul has been put through a grater. Rawness, exhaustion and euphoria mixed. What a strange combination!

Twelve years ago I chose to be placed in a painful yet transformative situation. Pilgrimage seems to be that too. Sorting out the transformation will take time but I think the pain is part of it just as it is when any new life emerges. No pill can take away these after pains but I pray I will soon find myself uttering, “I wanna do that again.”