Dear Stranger at the Park …
I’m sorry if I came off as rude.
No. I’m really not sorry at all. The only thing I’m sorry about is that my first instinct is to still say “I’m sorry” when I don’t do what someone else wants or expects me to do.
I had stopped to get some food, eat and read for a few minutes, then get on with my errands and my evening. Striking up conversation wasn’t part of that plan, certainly not with strangers who imposed themselves into my space and ignored every physical cue I was giving that I really wanted to be left alone.
I was fine with telling you where I got the food, but when you kept asking questions I just gave you a nod and looked away. Thankfully you got it and left.
You likely walked away with an unfavorable impression of me, but really I don’t care. I know who I am, and I am comfortable with that, even the areas that could use work. I can’t control what other people think of me, and it’s none of my business anyway. I like myself a whole lot. No other opinion merits much value, if any. I’ve worked very hard to get here.
There are a whole lot of boundary-less people out there, and I used to be one of them. I did things I did not want to do for people who were not always nice or respectful to me, sometimes for people I really didn’t even like at all. But, I felt like I had to do this thing, these things they were requesting of me. To refuse would mean I wasn’t nice. I really wanted you – ALL OF YOU – to think I was nice. If you didn’t, it was just confirming some of the bad things I was already thinking about myself.
But I’d do these things I didn’t want to do, and I’d get resentful. Sometimes it would make me not very nice to be around. I could complain that I was coerced, but that wasn’t true. I had said yes, and sometimes I had even volunteered without being asked. It was nobody’s fault but mine.
Back in those days it seems like I had a lot of unhappy people around me … people who tried to prove their problems were the worst or their achievements were the greatest or whatever. They aren’t bad people, but they are wounded, and they were looking to other people and other factors outside of themselves to heal those wounds. One day, I decided I couldn’t be in the healing business anymore. I found out it was a bottomless pit and a never ending battle. So I gave up and focused on healing my own wounds instead.
And what do you know! Now I’m mostly surrounded by positive and happy people. Respectful and kind people. Once I stopped acting like a victim, I stopped attracting people to prey on me.
And so, stranger at the park, I guess that brings us to our encounter. My intuition told me you were the kind of person who did not easily take no for an answer, and I knew if I gave you any sort of entry point, that would be my own fault. I’d be pressed to answer questions I did not want to answer, desperately searching for an escape from something I allowed. So instead, I didn’t even let the cycle start. That’s why there was no smile or air of welcome from me.
I’m not sorry about seeming rude or unfriendly. But I am thankful to you. Today you showed me how much I have grown.
Selling Fear? I’m Not Buying
Alexandra Petri is an excellent writer for the Washington Post. She’s featured on the ComPost blog but also writes a delightful column that appears in the Saturday print edition. Sadly, I’ve been unable to find those print columns online. I really wanted to share her July 27 entry with you, because it was nothing short of brilliant. It talked about the fears that other people will try their hardest to also push onto you.
Since I can’t find a link, here’s an excerpt:
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If you want to be absolutely safe in life, listen well. Imbibe my fears. Let them guide you.
Here is a vague smorgasbord of anecdotes, prejudices and bad experiences my uncle once had that will, I think, protect you from death or at least from new experiences that could change your mind about people, which are in some ways worse.
- Don’t jog at night. Don’t jog during the daytime. Never jog. One hundred percent of joggers who were mugged were jogging in the first place. …
- Don’t walk through certain areas of downtown Los Angeles, ever. One of your distant relatives once walked through that area, and he was savagely attacked by a saber-tooth tiger and dragged into a tar pit. …
- Avoid bus stops, parking lots, schools, houses, cars, the pyramids, the suburbs, the city, lakes, oceans, rivers, Kansas, your own back yard, hole-in-the-wall cafes, fancy restaurants, the environs of the Eiffel Tower, places where they serve food that is different from the food your mother cooked, barbecues, street festivals, Grandma’s house. Terrible things have happened in all those places. …
So far, no one who said that a life lived in fear is not worth living has ever made it out.
Try, if possible, not to be born. If you are born, you will have to interact with people who are different from you, and you will learn, and you will change your mind, and you will discover all kinds of wonder and unlooked-for happiness, and, one day, you will die.
This must be avoided at all costs.
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While Petri’s irreverent tone is joyful to read in and of itself, it’s also quite a serious look at the fears that people try to place onto others. I think this often happens between parents and children, but to some degree in any other type of relationship as well. People are afraid of things because of their own wounds, their own insecurities, their own bad experiences. Now they want YOU to be afraid too.
But doesn’t it all sound so ridiculous? And imagine it applied to larger things: Why you should avoid people of a certain cultural or ethnic background. Why you should never travel to foreign lands. Why you shouldn’t like something or want something or pursue your dreams – because they fall outside of the norm, because it’s different or strange, because people like us just don’t do that.
I’m writing about this because much of my emotional journey has been examining my relationship with fear. It’s the thing that’s kept me back from many things. Kept me from standing up for myself. Kept me from going after things I wanted. Kept me from living a truly fulfilled life at times.
I still confront fears at times and try to take inventory of them as a means of keeping them in check. I know they’re poking at me if I’m afraid of honestly and respectfully speaking my truth. If I’m afraid to take a risk, even if it would mean an opportunity to grow. If I’m more concerned with your feelings than with my own. Vulnerability and abandonment are two fears that have kicked at me for years. What if I say or do something that makes you not like me anymore? I’ve had to learn to put that thought in its place … to realize that the people who would walk away from the honest version of me are the ones who are best let go.
As I grow, I find my fears slipping away, holding less influence. As I find my courage, I find more freedom, more joy, more serenity. I find truth. I find the essence of who I really am. I hope that all of us, in some way, can find the means to be brave, to leave fear behind and instead be guided by faith. To let go … and truly live.
On Letting Go
Note: This is a guest post from my beautiful niece Hannah Stanton-Gockel – Ohio University student, world traveler, hoop artist extraordinaire, all-around cool chick!
I very much like to control my life. That might be because there have been so many moments when I have had no control and now I overcompensate. Or because change makes me really nervous (for example: when I was 3 and my parents put in a new backyard fence I felt like my childhood was being ripped to shreds, much in the same way those old wooden fence posts were being ripped out of the ground. I cried for about week.)
Another characteristic I have is that I always push my comfort zone, at the same time relishing and hating the combination of adrenaline and fear I get when I try new things. It’s a sensation I live for and live in fear of. This has had good results in my life though, generally speaking. I’ve traveled more extensively than many of my peers, having spent a total of 17 months abroad as an undergrad. I’ve pushed myself in college to excel, and, while not perfect, I’m graduating with honors, 2 majors and a certificate this year. I make an effort to say yes to challenging new experiences.
Yet, at the same time, I seek out control and try to predict situations. It’s quite the dichotomy.
I spent half of 2012 traveling through Central America, attempting to plan an elaborate 6 month trip that served to challenge my comfort zone in entirely new ways because I’d never traveled alone before… there was a lot on this trip that challenged me mentally and emotionally. Planning this trip was full of anxiety and excitement. I overly planned out every detail because I wanted everything to go in a perfectly predictable way.
I have two experiences I’d like to reflect on in this post that forced my give up my hard fought control and completely give in to the moment.
In Costa Rica, the day before I turned 23, I went bungee jumping with a group of friends. We were all terrified but I put up a front, hiding the anxiety I had felt nonstop for the past few days by smiling and joking and enjoying watching everyone else break a sweat. But inside, this was a huge challenge for me. The day before I came up with a mantra to repeat to myself to calm myself down, something that would allow me to give myself over to the moment and would settle my nerves for just a slight second before jumping. Fittingly, that mantra was “I relinquish control.” It’s a little cheesy but it was exactly what I needed. In the video of me jumping, you can actually see me mouth the words as I said them out loud before jumping. And as you can see, I didn’t just jump, I soared off the platform.
It was complete exhilaration. As you fall, you forget you’re falling, because all you can feel is the wind on your face (it’s like sticking your head out a car window). But four seconds later, the rope tightens and you snap back, realizing that you did not die, that you’re totally invincible and that yes, you must pay again for a second jump because bungee jumping is instantly addicting.
Very literally, I had to give up my desire to control and predict this situation. Of course I wanted to feel somewhat safe and not at risk of the rope snapping but people don’t go bungee jumping in order to feel safe. It was a cathartic moment too, because, although my time in Costa Rica was ending, I had another five months of travel ahead of me and I was intimidated… downright scared. I didn’t know if I could do it. But as I learned from this jump, I certainly could.
About a month later I was traveling through Nicaragua when I found myself spontaneously visiting the Corn Islands. I decided to stay there for a week and take a little vacation on Little Corn- an island so small that there are no roads and no cars. I stayed at a place called La Iguana right on the beach. One day the sea was so calm that the water looked like glass. I got some snorkel gear and went, by myself, half a mile out into the bay to explore the reef. I was swimming with schools of hundreds of fish of all sizes. I explored a sunken ship wreck. For a while I was the only human in this vast eco-system. My back got the worst sunburn it’s seen in years and I loved every second of it.
Little Corn Island and the bay where I swam with hundreds of fish, a stingray and sharks.
After about an hour I ran into (swam into?) a Frenchman who was also out in the big blue by himself, enjoying the perfect snorkeling weather. We snorkeled in the same general area for a while and then decided to go along the reef’s drop off to see if we couldn’t run into any of the hammerhead sharks we heard lived in the area. Being in water with so many other creatures creates this feeling of safety after a while. I was completely at ease. And I had already gone bungee jumping so why not look for hammerheads?
Perhaps luckily, we didn’t find the hammerheads but I did spot a massive stingray on the ocean floor. It was completely hidden by sand and I would’ve missed him if I hadn’t noticed the sand kicked up around near him. He swam out from under all the sand and as it slid off his back, his full size was recognized. He had a fin-span of about five feet, my own height, from my best estimates. But I was 15 feet above him so he could have been larger. I swam right on top of him, gazing down at his size and grace and beauty. The Frenchmen and I watched him for awhile and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. A four foot long baby nurse shark was swimming by the edge of the reef. Nurse sharks can grow to be more than 20 feet in length but are completely harmless.
What happened next was unforgettable. The nurse shark spotted us and swam straight towards me, as if in slow motion. It wasn’t so much slow motion as the fact that the shark was just ambling along at his own calm pace. I actually was quite scared because well, SHARK. But he was just curious and wanted to know what these strange creatures were. He swam right up to my face, a foot away from me, and looked right into my eyes. My nerves then got the better of me and I twitched my muscles and the little guy turned and darted away. The Frenchmen then popped his head out of the water and said in a heavy accent “Oh I love nature! I just love it!”
In this moment, surrounded by these incredible wild animals, I had to give in to the fact that I was in their environment. The stingray and the shark knew the water much better than I and I was at their mercy. Luckily, both were harmless that day but it served as an important lesson to me in the value of relaxing in the moment, giving up control, and just living.
Now, whenever I am stressed, I bring myself back to the cool Caribbean waters and the friendly nurse shark. I feel the sun on my back and the flippers helping me to float and the perfectly clear water and the little shark swimming up to me, just wondering who I am. It’s a good metaphor for all of life, really. Be calm but enjoy the adrenaline at the same time, be in the moment, and let go of the control you thought you had.
I’ve learned that there are many things we can’t control in life but if we give ourselves over to the moment, we don’t need to worry about control. And by doing so we live much more fully than we ever thought possible.
Young Spirit, Old Soul 