Hey to all….
I’m writing a bit more to add to the former lengthy post….
Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com has added her 2cents on her experience being interviewed on the Today Show.
Kudos to Heather. She comments with poise, grace, and compassion…and albeit down right honesty. She tells all her readers that even before going live Kathy Lee Gifford expressed relatability on being criticized by viewers for speaking about her family on air. So prior to any live footage, the two were united in common ground: they know the value of sharing personal stories with viewers/readers. And they know the costs. But do it anyway.
Heather compassionately handles the retelling of then what happened on air.
She also goes a step further.
She invites others to interview bloggers to try to wrap their arms around why this endeavor is as successful for some as it is..what the validity is among blogging communities. In short she invites broadcast media to have another chance.
I applaud this response. She doesn’t offer any sense of hurt, torn ego or anger and resentment.
She treats this issue well and professionally.
Why do I write about it thus?
Because my own maturing sense of grace yearns to treat people this same way. I could list 100’s of times when my motives have been called into question, when my style is bawked or condemned. And regrettably, I can not boast having taken the higher ground 50% of the time.
Surely I’m learning to. But the ego gets in there, self justifies and basically says ‘well to heck w/ them. if they don’t get it, so be it. i don’t have time for this’ and moves on.
Hello.
Where is the humanity in that?
Now in fairness, I haven’t maintained that disposition for a few years probably more. But I’m still well aware of when my feelings have been hurt, when I’ve felt wrongly accused, criticized and even fired for misjudgements of my character or misinterpretations of my motives.
In the long run, I’ve learned and am learning still it is ALWAYS better to respond with grace, poise, and compassion. Forgiveness needs to come as well and will.
At one point in my journey I was offered a job I had to move cross country for. I was promised a great salary with benefits. Come to find out a few months into that scenario, the reality was the job was never really budgeted for and before 90 days was up I was given my notice.
Crushed, bewildered, frantic, and furious, I was angry…very. I became resentful and dug myself into a great big pit of despair for far too long to admit. I’d trusted, really felt it was a good fit and then whammo! Ousted before I had even acclimated to this new area.
Shortly thereafter I learned that even had the job been approved, my qualifications would not have measured up. Okay. Humbling to learn but okay.
Still, I fumed over this for a long, long while. It got personal. I spent way too much time being angry at a few people and myself as well. I felt so stupid, naive, and clammed up on my sense of trusting humanity. For a while I felt used, exploited and taken advantage of.
Lemme tell ya where those negative emotions got me. NOWHERE. Absolutely nowhere.
Anger and hatred, bitterness and resentment never get you anywhere. And sure, you can kid yourself that you’re gonna lock all that emotion up and put it into a mental trunck and never again open it, or that you’ll just not think about that stuff anymore and never trust THOSE people again.
Try it. You are kidding yourself if you can simultaneously maintain a sense of peace.
In fact, during the aftermath, a few months into the saga while I was volunteering in a few different capacities, still fuming inwardly from my rejection, I broke out with a heinous fever and was in bed for days. It was the dead of winter. And I had a dog to take care of. Fortunately my neighbors helped me. But at that point, I knew I couldn’t just stew on my anger.
I needed healing.
And in my life for healing I turn to prayer based on the ideas in Science and Health. Day in and day ou,t I prayed like I do whenever I am treating myself. And day by day the fever broke a bit. But it would zip back up to really uncomfortable levels.
Well, during this time, a few people came to mind who I’d locked up in the trunk of “You are justified to despise these individuals.” UGH! I can’t stand admitting I even felt this way. But I did.
YET, divine Love was doing its work….was striving to embrace me with innocence and bathe me in goodness and was having a tough time doing so because my sense of ego and will were just right up there justifying these feelings.
Wasn’t gonna cut it. You can’t strive to be the emanation of divine Love while also harboring anger and resentment and loathing anyone or anything.
Aware of this, I started to walk down that path of forgiveness. I didn’t want to. I ADMIT IT.
Self justification was all over this effort screaming “What are ya kiddin’ me? You have every right to loathe this person for what he/she did to you. They don’t deserve forgiveness.’
OH REALLY?
Think again.
For the next 24 hours, I thought about shifting my perspective and aiming to see spiritually each of these individuals I’d dumped into that mental trunk. Bit by bit I took my thoughts of each one and considered each of them as a child of God. And I asked myself over and over “Tre, how is divine Love seeing its expression as this person? Tre, is divine Love seeing an example of manhood or womanhood that it created that can harm another?”
In fact, the heinous things people do are moments of hiccups of behavior, attitude, being. They are not the true nature of that person. No one wake up and bounds outa bed to take advantage of someone. NO ONE DOES. If they do this, it’s because of a pattern of behavior. But it’s changeable and it’s not their true nature and substance.
As a spiritual seeker and person who practices the Science of Being as explained in Eddy’s Science and Health, I’ve vowed to take up all that opposes the true nature of someone and advocate for his or her true individuality. So nothing was different in my view of these people that had wronged me.
I needed to flush out all the ill will and anger I felt. I needed to stop thinking of them as heinous people and mean people and worthless people and no good people. I needed to see them purely, wholely spiritually.
Would my doing this inevitably change their outward dispositions and actions? Not necessarily. But it WOULD heal my wrong sense of them.
And this is key to healing.
It is not mine or yours to ensure that someone change their ways and be a poised, graceful, honest, fair, just, compassionate individual. It is our duty to insist that such is their true nature, regardless if we’re shown this behavior or not.
In my case, as I let go of all the hatred, as I sought to find each aspect of good that each one of these people manifested, my fever broke. It took a bit…but it did finally break and I was able to join up with some family and spend a normal (somewhat) holiday with them. I say somewhat b/c in my family nothing is ever quite normal. 🙂
Anyhoo, I could write more and more about how Iprayed, about how iIhealed my loathing toward these folks…And I probably will. For now my point: harboring resentment, hatred, or anger toward anyone, no matter how justified, will never get you where you need to go in your own journey. In fact, harboring this muckety muck will slow you down tremendously.
So no matter what, get into that thought of yours and start weeding out all the muck all the huggabaloo and all the icky stuff. You can do it. You deserve to do it. And what’s more, humanity deserves nothing less.
Enjoy your journey. Shoot me an email or gimme a call if you want some help with any of this or just wanna chat about it.
Be well….Tre 😉 evolveserenity@gmail.com; 305/394.1070 (At&t unlimited mins)