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A story of snow . . .

Words and storytelling give us tools to amplify wonder and joy in the everyday.

I walk across the park on my way to work through falling snow. Momentarily, I lower my eyelids and open my inner eyes. I am surrounded by myriad crystals, each unlike any other, that in moments will cease to be.

Later, amid the forced exodus of a fire alarm, I am blessed by a single, perfect flower-crystal that rests on my coat’s puffy black sleeve. I wonder, without that amplified perception that I chose to tap into earlier, would I have overlooked this gift?

Snow flakes by Wilson Bentley

Once again, I seem to have used a combination of knowledge and internal storytelling to fuel my sense of joy.

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The importance of storytelling

Through listening to and reading the stories of others, we build the tools we need to frame our own experiences. Without words or narrative skill, we cannot reference or fully inhabit what happens to us and our responses to it; we cannot focus our thoughts or our emotions.

Stories give us metaphor, the stuff of the ‘creation of meaning’. They give us legends based on archetypes that enable us to recognize the rich cast of characters that inhabit our inner worlds.

Our ability to tell our own story and, further, to be aware that we choose the particular narrative that we tell ourselves and others, has a profound impact on our capacity for happiness.

The quality of our personal storytelling, as well as our capacity to listen to and truly hear the stories of others, is fundamental to our ability to connect, to build relationship.

Storytelling enables us to share our experiences and our perceptions of them and thus to show each other who we are. Our stories bind us together by connecting us to the commonality of symbol and myth and to our shared humanity.

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Can knowledge amplify joy?

Walking in snow-like-sand, entranced by each grain’s iridescent glitter.  Does the knowledge of the unseen, the microscopic beauty of the crystal structures, increase my sense of wonder, of joy?

I have always perceived joy as being fed by wisdom rather than knowledge, yet I can see the possibility that humankind’s amazing curiosity and creativity open up ways of knowing, of seeing or otherwise experiencing that amplify perception even when that mode of perception is not available.

Or is this merely an intellectualization?

Reflecting Winter

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Brokenness and Being Human

We watched The Ides of March today and the thought that I came away with was that, until we accept the fundamental ‘brokenness’ of each and every individual, we condemn ourselves  to a downward spiral of cynicism and disillusion and to the machinations of the most damaged and controlling among us.

In every child’s growth to adulthood, at some point they have to face the reality that their parents are less than perfect, often contradictory and that they do not have all the answers. Hopefully, most children move beyond this into a changed but still loving relationship. Why, then, do we seem increasingly to expect our authority figures, our leaders, to be any less flawed than the rest of us?

Only through the acceptance of brokenness can we embrace and honour the best of what it is to be human. Integrity and the power for good are not cancelled out by imperfection. By holding those in high office to impossible standards, we allow their humanity to be used against them; either we reject them for their ‘weakness’ or their integrity is compromised in the attempt not to expose that ‘weakness’ and they are left open to manipulation.

Thus our unrealistic requirement for ‘perfection’ becomes the basis of ‘corruption’ and there is no longer room in the world for ‘great’ human beings.

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Compassionate parenting

A friend asked me whether, in the context of his adult children, I thought that compassionate ‘being with’ was contradicted by acting to make things better or right for them.

I think it is important to understand what is behind any such action.

I remember as a young mother becoming aware of how often a caregiver will gather a distressed child to them and say ‘don’t cry’. It seemed to me that at some levels this ministered more to their own distress than the child’s. I tried, therefore, to cultivate an ability to transmit a message more along the lines ‘ I am here with you,  I acknowledge your pain; if you need to deal with that pain by crying, I will provide the safe space in which you can do so’.

I wonder whether an important element of compassion is the ability to put aside our own response (pain or fear) so as to allow space for that of the other?

Therefore, if an action is driven by the need to alleviate our own distress, it is not truly fuelled by compassion.

As our children get older, their explorations take them further from us, the risks they take and the pains they experience become more complex. As parents, we increasingly have to learn how to let them go, to allow and enable them manage their own lives and experiences and to learn from these.

Therefore, when we see them in pain or difficulty, whilst our impulse may be to wade in an ‘make it right’, this has to be balanced against their need to develop confidence in their own resilience and capability.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply to let them know ‘I am here, I witness your pain or difficulty, I am confident that you can deal with this yourself, but will support you if you need me.’ It is important that our actions, however well intentioned, do not simply reinforce a pattern of neediness and dependency.

I truly believe that the greatest joy for a parent is to see their child fly strong and free!