I was at the park with my son after school one afternoon when he had a disagreement with his buddy. They were both tired and hungry, and it was about time to go anyhow, so I was like oookay, let’s just wrap this up, head home, and get on with the rest of our day. But my son was insistent upon describing eeevery detail of what happened between the two of them, explaining exactly how he felt, exactly why he felt that way, and getting angrier and more upset as he relived each moment of the drama. In an attempt to quell his hysteria, I suggested we take some deep, slow breaths together (which was obviously SO annoying). When that didn’t work I realized I had to let him talk me through the entire story (while I sat freezing my ass off at the park). I tried to hurry him along so that we could get to the part where the yoga instructor in me could teach him about letting go of the anger and freaking walk home already(!), but he was having none of it. It was vitally important to him to be heard and feel understood (gee, I wonder where he gets that from 😉 even if it meant staying at that park until the sun went down. I’ll spare you all the details and cut to the chase: we do finally make it home (with lots of foot stamping and yelling) where he continued to re-tell the story and re-live the saga for. the. rest. of. the. day.
A few days later I was listening to one of Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations, the one with Pema Chödron. In it, the topic of the “Me Too” movement arose, and there was a moment in which Pema was kind of trying to move past the storytelling and get to the forgiveness part. Well, Oprah was like (and I paraphrase): Oh hell no! We are not there yet. We may get there individually and collectively someday, but we are not there now. Right now is the time when these stories must be told and heard.
I find we experience this pull toward resolve internally, as well. There are parts of us demanding our attention and needing to be understood. There are stories which are screaming in an attempt to be heard. Even if we can intellectualize beyond them, I believe we must give them their time and space to be heard. Then we can talk about detaching and dropping the story. Then we can discuss forgiveness both on a personal, internal level, and on a global, societal level.
It’s natural to want to rush through the telling and hearing of the story because often that part is messy and uncomfortable, and so we want to hurry up and get to the part where there is peace and resolve. We’re like, okay we’ll go “through” because we hear that’s what we’re supposed to do — go through instead of around — but could we please go through quickly, wrap this up neatly, and move on already?
Sometimes the answer is “No.” We don’t get to decide how long this part takes. It might take minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years — that’s not for us to worry about. This phase will let us know when it’s done. And until then, we listen.
We can practice resisting the urge to rush through the uncomfortable part and get to the resolution by doing our best to stay open to the present moment while being gentle and kind with ourselves. This can be so challenging… that’s why we practice.
Krystal Barschig 