I have had a tendency to define my boundaries based upon telling others how they are violating my own. A tendency to become very determined that others understand the breach which they have crossed instead of simply sitting still inside of myself, knowing my own boundary, setting it, and plain and simply just not allowing it to be violated.
Yesterday, I made a very different choice.
I didn't lecture. I simply observed. I took notice of what was happening and noted to myself how "not okay" it was with me. But I also took a broader view. I could see what was in front of me. I could sit in the NOW which I was in, aware of how limited it was in its scope, in its hearing, its listening, admitting, and most certainly, its apologizing. There was simply no need to comment. No need at all. All I needed to do was to pause. To stay in my own integrity and to walk back to my own heart and root myself in kindness, in my trust in myself, in my own strength and in my clarity. I felt no charge about the other.
And therefore, did not allow any boundary violation.
No charge. No violation.
It was a big shift.
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If we get lucky in this life, we meet people who are willing to sit before us and hold a mirror in front of us to show us precisely the reflection of who we are. That reflection may not be terribly attractive at times. But if we have the capacity and the willingness, we can look at our image and not deny what we see.
Yesterday, I took responsibility for deep pain which I have caused two people who have
evoked within me more pain than I wish to write about here. I saw the part that I had played, seeing that they cared to know nothing of their own participation, and with impeccable language, I asked permission to apologize for the pain I believe I had caused.
Their capacities for listening were not pristine, and so it took a few rounds of going through this apology which was challenging, to say the least. But, I saw that, ultimately, I moved their lives forward. And undoubtedly, my own.
*
A shift.
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It takes a lot to look into a mirror and to investigate the deepest caverns of the truth. We can each walk around and hold onto a story we are comfortable sticking to for our entire lives. Or we can choose to clean the mirror and see what part we have played in that story.
I will always pour through mounds and mounds of dirt and dust and muck and pain and then clean it up in order to choose the latter.
And if I can help clean up another mound-heap, I will do that as well.
From love.
5-25-13
Jill Bacharach
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