If we don’t know better, how can we do better?
Your body is an amazing machine, regulating and maintaining itself pretty much outside of your awareness. Cut yourself, for example, and your body immediately goes into defense and repair mode. Blood cells come together to form platelets that produce clotting and stop the bleeding. Simultaneously, your immune system goes into high gear, sending out white blood cells and other chemicals to prevent and fight off any possible infection. If an infection develops, your body temperature will rise in the form of a fever. A higher body temperature keeps bacteria and viruses from reproducing and growing.
While all of this action is going on outside of your awareness radar, your body is programmed to prompt you to take care of it, much like the maintenance and warning lights on your car dashboard. But rather than flashing cute orange and red pictures, the body’s warning lights usually come in the form of pain. Sometimes horrible pain! The purpose of the pain is to force you to participate in your own healing process because most humans will do anything in their power to be pain-free. In the case of a cut, you are responsible for cleaning, dressing, and covering the wound to prevent further infection and help speed up the healing.
Not all of the body’s warning signals come in the form of physical pain. When needed, the body will also trigger emotional pain that may have no real connection to any actual physical pain. Emotional pain can range from having unpleasant feelings to experiencing a type of mental agony. Emotional pain includes psychological pain, social pain, and spiritual pain. Buddha called this emotional pain “the suffering of the mind.”
Of course we need to take care of our bodies in order to prevent illness and live relatively pain-free. So we repeat to children, “Eat right! Take a bath! Brush your teeth! Go to bed! Wake up! Do good in school!” Adults repeat so many rules that are meant to help children take care of their bodies and be responsible for their future. But when it comes to helping a child deal with emotional pain, it sounds like children helping children. “Stop crying! Nothing’s wrong! You have no reason to be mad! You’re being a baby!” Rather than helping the child learn how to identify what he or she is feeling so that they can process it, learn from it, and then let it go, these feelings are ignored. The result is a more frustrated, more hurt, and, worse, an angrier child. Who tells a person to stop smiling and then lists all the reasons of why he or she should not be happy? Ridiculous! ALL feelings, both positive and negative, must be acknowledged and respected!
I recently watched a Facebook video of a conversation a father had with his young daughter after she became angry at him for teasing her. The father, kneeling on the floor and with his arms around his daughter, calmly tells her:
“You don’t always have to be happy. You don’t always have to be silly or funny. You don’t have to be anything. But the important thing is that whenever you’re feeling like this, do not hold on to it. You want to accept it. You want to acknowledge it. And then let it go. It will get better. Just let it be. You’re still loved. You’re still safe. It’s okay to feel this way. You can be mad at me or at Mommy or your sister or you can be mad at yourself. Okay? (His daughter nods ‘yes.’) Just don’t hang on to it for too long because that’s when it gets to be a problem. Let it go and work through it.”
“I was just teasing you, Honey. I didn’t mean anything by it. You know how you call me jerk face sometimes? Sometimes it’s okay and sometimes I get a little bit mad, don’t I? And that’s okay. It’s important to talk about it so that I know that is your boundary so that I respect it and I won’t push past it. But you have to tell me first. It’s okay to joke sometimes and sometimes it’s not so fun. But I respect you and I respect your feelings. And if it’s not okay to joke with you today, I won’t do it. Just let me know. If I don’t know better, I can’t do better. I won’t joke with you today, okay? (Daughter again nods ‘yes.’) Now let’s take a good walk and you can run that anger off. You can kick dirt, whatever you need to get through this to make you feel better. Can I have a kiss? I’m sorry.” (The daughter hugs and kisses her father and they get ready for their walk.)
We are not born with the skills of expressing our feelings appropriately. But that is no reason not to learn from others. This conversation was honest. This conversation was respectful. This conversation was LOVE! It was as if the Lord himself were talking to this child and telling her, “It’s okay to be angry. Just learn from it and let it go.” If we do not understand the reason for our emotional pain, how can we let it go? In the words of this wise father: If we don’t know better, how can we do better?
Mother Owl
