I’ve been going
through something lately. Something big. Its beating me up, and teaching me a
great deal. I’m not really going to describe the details, but I am going to
dwell on the process. I’ve found that as I get older that the process of
integration, that is happening, brings me up against some of my life-long
patterns. When that happens I usually don’t respond very well. I am reluctant
to let myself feel the conflict, disappointment, and grief within. I guess it
is only natural. I’m human, and much of what confronts me, are patterns of
belief and behavior that have clearly defined me in the past.
Life doesn’t seem to
care. At least in no way that I have considered caring. What I’m finding is
that Life is impeccably ruthless. It rubs my face in the messes I have indulged
in making. There is some kind of impersonal and highly idiosyncratic love at
work. I’m being shaped up despite myself. The process is reliable, painful, and
grace-filled. Life seems to know how to evolve a better me, and very slowly I’m
learning how to trust that process and cooperate with it.
I think it was the
developmentalist Robert Kegan that first impressed me with the realization that
resisting Life is painful. I do it all of the time. And, I am paying for it.
But, as I get older, I’m more prone to notice what is at stake, and to suffer
more honestly. That means I am more likely to admit to myself, and others, that
I have succeeded again in getting in my own way, and making it hard to change.
I would rather fight anything than fight myself. Despite my resolve, Life keeps
finding the blemishes in my character that need attention, and calling my
attention to them.
Right now, I’m being
faced with my own well-designed falseness. I’ve lived out a kind of arrogant
stance that I know has hurt me, and especially those I professed to care for.
That’s a hard awareness to be confronted by. And I’m really grateful that I’m
being confronted by it right now, when I can still do something about it,
rather than in my last moments of life. Life seems to have a bucket list for me,
that if I handle some of these items, I’m going to rest easier when I die. That
seems like a kind of compassionate justice I could never imagine.
The problem of the
moment is that I have such a reluctance to face the music. It is humiliating,
admitting one’s shortcomings; facing how unloving, and self-protective, one is
(I’m not past anything yet). I’m not collapsing into shame, although I can feel
the temptation. I am standing forlornly in front of my own humanity. I can see
that my own reluctance to see what a schlemiel I am capable of being has been a
form of resistance. I didn’t want to know myself that well.
This kind of
self-knowing is a painful gift. Life cares about me enough to make me really
uncomfortable with what I am capable of. And, it’s giving me a chance to find
out where integrity lays in my life. In some kind of strange twist of fate, my
gratitude grows as I open up to the hurt I have participated in perpetuating.
With all of that
kind of awareness cascading into my life like an avalanche of wakefulness, I am
enlivened and chagrined. My reluctance before awareness is clearly putting off
the inevitability of the gift. Am I resisting, or merely crouching in anticipation
of the loving blow? I really can’t say. I know that I have resisted, and that
my reluctance has abetted my resistance. I am that human, stubbornly determined
to have things my way. But, lately, aging has softened me up, and provided more
perspective. I now walk towards what diminishes me, in an effort to cooperate
more with the wholing process I now perceive.
Reluctance is
turning out to be a faithful scout, a little scraggly, deceptively anxious, but
unerring in noticing that something is coming. And, I’m finding that even a
broken life is an incredible gift.
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