May 8, 2014
Mama said there’d be days like this. It’s been weeks of days like this.
When you need to change your mind about something that’s buried deep in your blind spot, getting a good, swift sucker punch or two from someone close will do the trick. It’s best if the motivation behind the attack is baffling and irrational – spawned from psychological guck buried in someone else’s blind spot that gets torpedoed into your gut. I wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone, but I do acknowledge the effectiveness of it.
Everyone I know has had this happen to them.
The three that recently occurred in my life (from three different sources) have all had slightly delayed impact, but each one came from out of the blue, stopped me in my tracks and caused internal damage. To regain functionality required three full days of full, focused attention each time.
Always, in my experience, the job is to absorb the blow but maintain some degree of objectivity, since the immediate temptation is to release the Hounds of Hell, to throw the mighty Mjölnir, to call down the Furies on the head of one’s beloved perpetrator with a howl that would elicit a sympathetic whimper from Cerberus.
That’s called “Reaction”.
What’s required in situations like this, if you want to avoid escalation into permanent, irrevocable damage, is “Response”.
That requires humility. Always.
Where shall I look for this? How shall I name my new wisdom, claim my newly exposed misconceptions, embrace my tender vulnerabilities, and maintain vigilance with my Amazon self, who twitches and chafes so (in full battle armour, sword razor sharp).
Clearly there’s work to be done here, in this tender blind spot.
I shall gather all of this into one place, then, and paint with it.
“Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry”
William Butler Yeats