Things Should Be Different

This week, a friend admitted to experiencing an emotional ‘hardening’ due to the situation in the Middle East. I imagined a kind of armoring or walling up. I don’t know exactly how this feels in another person’s body, but I know how a hardening happens in me.

Photo by Omer Salom on Unsplash

The reason I know this feeling is because it’s part of my defense system, it’s a way I habitually keep myself safe from emotional harm. Incoming threat? No problem, we’ve got it covered! Pull up the drawbridge, barricade the gates, roll down the shades. In a split second, through a series of signature moves my heart closes, I start drifting into the distance, my eyes drop back into their sockets as I feel an inner contraction remove me from my extremities. It’s as if my body were saying, even inside here it’s important to retreat as far as possible. You never know how far the enemy can reach. You never know. You can’t possibly hide deep enough.  I recognize the familiar voice of fear.

Emotionally, this move is dressed as anger. Let’s face it, anger is more socially acceptable than fear. In my case, hardening toward another party comes with a level of defensiveness, a righteousness even. It’s a blend of anger and contempt that undoubtedly results in collateral damage for all involved. But it is a survival strategy, and it’s kept me “safe” for long enough, so there’s that.

The hardening shows me the path to the promised land: a place where I don’t need to feel hurt. I escape into my mind, drifting into a nowhere space where time loses meaning, where voices are faint, and I am floating. Immune to everything, here I hear less, see less, feel less…because I am no longer present. Even my hardened heart is long forgotten, having served its purpose as a doorway into the unfeeling territory where I simply don’t have to deal with… anything.

So, when I heard this friend name the ‘hardening,’ it jolted me awake. It was such a bold move to admit to a hardening of the heart. What openness! What vulnerability in practice! What presence! I was in awe of his exposure.  All I could feel was love. Love! I have to say, when I think of myself, I don’t imagine a drop of Mother Theresa in me. It’s not like I walk around all day feeling love and compassion for humankind. I’m as human and flawed as it gets. That’s why I was shocked when I didn’t judge, agree, or disagree with the statement. The only thing I could offer to this friend was acceptance and love considering our tender exchange. I felt it deeply and sincerely. I still do.

Anyway, the moment passed, and we proceeded with whatever was next in our lives. Until it caught up with me several days later, when in an otherwise uncharged conversation, a casual comment made by a family member threw me off. This person made what I assessed to be an unfeeling remark, and before I knew it, I was activated.  I was immediately hijacked into resentment and fantasized about retribution, not enacted by me, of course, but by my mercenaries – Destiny and Fate. It feels so extreme as I recall it, yet it was so easy to do. In an instant I felt my hardening heart.

And then I remembered the vulnerability that this courageous friend of mine had practiced by naming the hardening heart in real time. I decided to do the same. I admitted to my own hardening heart, as I felt the hurtful comment. I noticed, in slow motion, how an energetic wall went up between me and the person who spoke the words. I noticed myself getting angry, wanting to make an enemy out of the other person.

Only this time, I didn’t turn away from myself. I didn’t resist; I just watched myself from a distance. I witnessed the hatred of which I am entirely capable, but this time I didn’t take the escape hatch to an unfeeling state. It was difficult, so difficult.

I’ve had some time to sit with this experience.

It occurs to me that while we grapple with a world that is fraught with conflict, it’s tempting to look outside of ourselves for the culprit. So-and-so should stop doing this! This person needs to do that! If only the world were like this and not like that. Every one of these gripes falls into the category of things should be different. There are so many prescriptions for how things could and should be different, and yet the answer is right here, right now. The answer is in the present.

In the present, I am reminded that the first war is inside me. The first hostage I take is my own heart. And the first peace accord I need to build is with myself. When I am present, I can see reality for what it is. When I am present, and not checked out, not numbing, not disassociating, I can see the parts of me that I don’t want to see. When I am present, I don’t turn away from rejecting anything or anyone, including myself. When I do reject myself (as I so frequently do), I stay present to that, too.

I say this as if I had solved this, once and for all. Who am I kidding? I am just taking baby steps. Every day brings another opportunity to practice.

I’m coming to learn that the path to peace has less to do with never waging war, and more to do with witnessing my defensiveness and negotiating small ceasefires with myself. When I can do that with me, then I can do that with others. The bumper sticker “Think Global, Act Local” used to feel like some hippie catchphrase, but it has never made more sense. Except that the ‘act local’ bit is way more local than I ever imagined: it begins with making peace with my own hardening heart.