Let me tell you a story……………...

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Everyone loves a story. We look for stories all the time. Our social media is filled with stories. Day after day story after story, but we look for the stories we want the ones that tell us what we want to hear. We look for the stories that meet and fit nicely with our idea about what life should look like in it's neat and tidy package. When the stories don't fit this idea, we judge the people in the stories and then we don't retell them, that is for sure. So, I was thinking about how I used to think about stories, before some of the ones in my life had such sad and tragic endings, leaving me wondering about just about everything. That is when I started to notice how we respond to the emotions in stories. Did you know that there are some culturally appropriate emotions and some that just don't sell when it comes to books and movies and pass along social media stories or even a face to face conversation. My daughter pictured in the above link shared her story. Now this is her story, but if one of my other children, or someone else had shared their story it would be just as relevant. You see it is not the details of the story that make it important. It is the story, the struggle, the sadness, anger, regret, fear…… If you listen to the musical story, maybe you know some of the things that happened and maybe you do not, but here is what I found interesting in listening to her story. There were parts of her story that I knew would be uncomfortable, not for her, but for others. The story starts with a sadness that will take your breathe away, relatable. We have all felt that sadness and sometimes when we hear the sadness in someone else's story we resonant so deeply with it because of our own. It is one of the emotions of life that we know we must experience. IT is part of grieving, part of losing, part of letting go, but did you ever notice there is kind of a shelf life on sadness. We stop and do the math. How long ago was the event causing the sadness? Do they still have cause for this? For the first while of the allotted time, people are kind and want to offer support, but that gradually fades to a space of discomfort with a person's sadness. I am not advocating that we hope to stay in sadness, or that you need other people to do something so you can sort your sadness, but I learned an interesting lesson in my own process of grief. That is when you start grieving the event and the loss you experienced, it is like opening the flood gates and once it starts coming, there is no stopping it, so perhaps if you have stored many moments of sadness away without properly honoring them you might have a lot that you have to pick up and hold and cry about, meaning the idea of a time line cannot be processed. Now the real problem with this whole experience isn't what other people do or don't do to those that are grieving, it is how we hold our own grief on a day to day basis. If I am comfortable with a moment of sadness take the time to hold it and myself gently when it happens, it will not phase me to sit with someone doing just that. When I am not afraid of my own sadness I do not need to rush or "fix" another person through theirs. Sadness is the easy emotion. The one we just can't really get an honest grasp on, either for ourselves or others is anger. When we have been angry, how often have we been told/taught about "controlling our anger" I know I was. So, anger is uncomfortable because we are trying to control it. The funny thing about the things we try hardest to control, they become the most out of control. They are the most uncomfortable to bear. So when a person grieving goes through the anger portion of their grief. We tell them to "Forgive and Forget" We post wonderful inspiring stories of people who have forgiven and changed someone's life and how wonderful they feel. We then hold this up as the "ideal" that we should strive for. The problem with idealism is that it removes the individual from it. When the individual is the focus, then we move into realism. Nobody wants to hear the story about the guy who was mad. That isn't a good story, and there is tons of judgement around anger. Ever notice that? I have experienced that and learned quite quickly not to share my anger. It wasn't pretty and the amount of people in our culture uncomfortable with their anger is let's just say , it is high. How do I know? I watch people, I watch what they say and I watch for incongruence, because it helps me understand what people are really saying. If I say one thing and do another, it has a clear message. The funny thing is when it is us doing the incongruence, we can never see it. We say we believe in freedom of speech and then we criticize someone who says something that is different than what we believe,when at the same time we speak out on issues that perhaps the same person may disagree with, but somehow it is ok for us to say it, but not for the guy that is making me uncomfortable with his opinion. I think we call that the emotional plague reaction, just post something controversial in your circles and watch the reaction. Anger has many faces, all dying to be controlled. All as destructive as the last. And not because anger is destructive. IT is not, it is a message to us to create a shift or change , but if we try to control the shift or change instead of just listening and hearing our needs. We do a terrible disservice to ourselves and to others. Road rage, it is not about something out of control, although it is that. It is actually about something that is being controlled far to well and is simply rising up in a place that a person cannot ignore. I had a moment the other day when I started to feel angry about an external circumstance and I stopped realizing these truths and asked myself what was I really angry about. Turns out,it wasn't anger, it was some sadness, some disappointment, and some experiences that were just about the process of coming to know something and recognize it. Nothing special, but still kind of scary. The funny thing about not trying to control the anger around the would be offender, there was no need, when I stopped to hear where it was really coming from, the realization hit me. I was afraid and after moving to a place of comfort to calm my fear. I wasn't really even angry, but I sure felt it initially. So back to anger, if we find a sense of understanding and comfort in our own anger a really cool thing happens: someone else's isn't scary anymore. There aren't demons in my closet to uncover with another person's anger because I already exorcised them, or perhaps there are and I feel relieved that something has shed the light so that I can let them go. Criticism becomes an effort to bring up anger to bring light to a person's process and it is kind of a cool thing to observe. I am happy when I watch the anger arise because I know the healing is really moving. The only thing we really lose is our ability to see that if we put our feet down on the ground, we are on solid ground. But we try to control it, like a drowning victim fighting for air, we fight and hurt others when we won't look where we need to. We have been drowning ourselves. But again, this is not simple, it is process. We ebb, we flow, we get angry, we blame others, we stomp and get ourselves all worked up, until finally we realize we aren't the victim, we are only making ourselves one. We stand up hold it, honor it and then we let it go. But those fighting the battle of their own anger will be terrified and more angry that you may be illuminating their journey as well as your own. So, I hope you listen to your ow story, because when you are uncomfortable with someone else's, there is a message in your own. May you enjoy the music, the sadness, the anger, the regret, the fear and the triumph of this story and of your own.