How Did I Get Here?: Navigating the unexpected turns in love and life. Barbara Angelis De

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СКАЧАТЬ is not an easy task—facing your questions can be a painful, unnerving process. Most of us are much more comfortable with answers than with questions, much more at ease with certainty than with doubt. Too often we flee from our uncertainties, desperate to get back to hard facts, to emotional and intellectual solid ground, to things we are sure of. We do not like to linger too long in the land of “I don’t know.”

      This reluctance is understandable. We live in a society where absolute certainty, even if it is biased, narrow-minded, or just plain incorrect, is rewarded—just turn on the television or radio and you will be barraged with countless examples of this: opinionated commentators who never waver from their rigid points of view; talk show experts who harshly preach black and white and nothing in between; reality TV contestants who win the prize, the date, the proposal or the job, often because they display the most unwavering, arrogant assuredness. Doubt, hesitation, introspection—these don’t sell. Certainty does. Is it any wonder, then, that we learn to bury our uncertainties beneath a thick covering of avoidance and denial?

      Imagine going to a party and seeing an acquaintance you haven’t been in touch with for some time. “How have you been?” your friend asks. Most likely, you wouldn’t answer, “Actually, I’m confused. You see, I am in a period of deep questioning.” To confess that you are unsure or disoriented would make you feel vulnerable, insecure, exposed. To admit, even to yourself, that you are feeling lost can cause you to feel that somehow you have failed.

      This is precisely what will happen when you begin to dig deep—at least in the privacy of your own heart. You will begin to question. You will begin to ask yourself, “How did I get here?” You will feel disoriented, vulnerable, even lost.

      But you are not lost.

       “How did I get here?” has a “here” in it. You are somewhere. Just because you may not yet understand where that somewhere is does not mean you are in the wrong place, or even necessarily off course. To arrive at a place we don’t recognize is indeed a legitimate destination in life.

      A few weeks ago I met my friend Molly for coffee. I hadn’t seen her for a while, and Molly, who is a single parent with a rebellious fifteen-year-old daughter, proceeded to tell me about her latest crisis. Molly’s daughter had been lying to her, hanging out with some very troubled kids, and neglecting her schoolwork. “I am so stressed out,” Molly confessed. “After all I have done for Jenna, how can she treat me like this? It makes me feel like I am a bad mother and that I haven’t done a good job. And of all times—I am so swamped at work. I’ve decided I’m giving myself two days to process all of this, and then I’m putting it behind me.”

      As Molly finished her story, she noticed that in spite of my best efforts to disguise it, I was smiling. “What?” she said. “I know you, Barbara, and when you get that look on your face, it means you’re about to tell me something you are seeing about my situation that I haven’t figured out yet! Come on, I can take it.”

      “You’re right,” I admitted. “Actually, I was just thinking how much you remind me of myself. Throughout my life, I have always been in a rush to find the answers, to have the realizations, to get to certainty about everything. When you said that you were giving yourself two days to process your problems with Jenna, and no more, it cracked me up! It’s like insisting, ‘I will extract the lesson from this now even if it kills me!’ Whenever I have done this, it’s my way of trying to get things back under control. I am in a hurry to find solutions because I feel so uncomfortable lingering in the problems.”

      Molly laughed. “You’re right. Part of me just wants to get this whole thing over with. But I know it is going to take a lot longer than two days to deal with how I am feeling. I just can’t help wishing there was a way to speed it up.”

      We all know how Molly feels. After all, we live in a society defined by our hunger for instant gratification. When I enter the word “instant” into my computer’s search engine, I get 25,700,000 references, instantly, of course! From instant soup to instant replay, instant Internet connections, instant messaging, instant credit, instant face-lifts, instant erections—we want what we want now. We are impatient, not very good at waiting for long-term results and possessing little tolerance of things that take time.

      Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could set a time limit on our trials and challenges, like those speed-dating services that offer meetings with twenty people in one evening? This would be “speed-growing”—go through your issues and learn your lessons in one day! Unfortunately, as you already know too well, this isn’t how it works.

      Digging deep for wisdom isn’t something that goes quickly or can be rushed through. It is more a state of mind than a set time period during which we decide to examine our lives. The process of digging deep can last for months, even years. It requires that we stay with the questions, and that we not be in a hurry to answer them.

       Digging deep for wisdom takes time because it is not simply a search for some facts or answers, but a search for the truth. Our usual skills of problem-solving, finding answers and figuring things out will not do. Digging deep requires authentic and prolonged contemplation.

      Contemplation has been an integral part of the path of all great philosophers and spiritual seekers since the beginning of recorded history. The word contemplation contains the Latin root templum, meaning a piece of consecrated ground, a building (temple) of worship, a place devoted to a special and lofty purpose. The dictionary defines contemplation as “to view with continued attention.” In traditional religious understanding, contemplation is an inner communion with God, as opposed to prayer, which might be called a conversation with God.

      For our purposes, we can think of contemplation as the act of paying continued attention to that special place within us from which truth, insight, revelation and enlightenment spring forth. When you dig deep for wisdom, you contemplate your questions, your unexpected challenges and your turning points, and you wait for answers. As Rilke put it in his beautiful poem, you “live the questions.”

      Have you ever gazed at the night sky, hoping to see a shooting star? You stare for a long time at the twinkling constellations, the distant galaxies, and they are beautiful, but no shooting stars appear. Suddenly, just when you think your search has been in vain, you see it—a brilliant flash of light arching across the heavens. It is spectacular, and something worth waiting for.

      Contemplation is slow. It takes time. It can be uncomfortable, exasperating, even painful. But if you are patient, your wait will be worth it.

      Several months ago, I decided to replant a portion of my garden. I’d tried to get flowers to grow in this part of the yard, but for some reason they always died. I thought perhaps the soil needed to be weeded and turned over, and that this would help the new flowers to thrive, and so I hired a man to dig up all of the weeds and prepare the soil for planting.

      The gardener began his work early one morning, but within minutes he came to the front door and asked me to look at something he’d found while digging. “See this?” he said pointing into the freshly dug hole. “These are the old roots of a tree that must have been here at one time. It was a big tree, because these roots go very deep and spread out for ten feet in each direction. No wonder you had a hard time getting things to grow.”

      There is an old saying: “Dig deep enough and you will hit something.” Usually we hit something we didn’t know was there, something unexpected. There are many things within you waiting to be discovered like the old roots buried beneath the soil in my garden. Perhaps some are roots of old emotional issues that you did not know СКАЧАТЬ