Let's break the circle of pain...

"We all need to matter and feel that our lives have meaning. We all want to be loved for who we are." Reminders from my training abound as I meet yet another person not at peace in their skin. This topic has always been intriguing to me as I am fortunate enough to feel interiorly at peace most everyday. I am not implying that I never feel unrest. On the contrary. I have had many many moments and times when it felt that life might break me, when I felt raw, and poorly able to sit quietly with the emotions swirling inside. But I think what I have always been able to do is soothe that interior storm, find my inner calm.

Sadly this whole “not at peace thing” is a vicious circle. You are not at peace, so you reach out to others to share, in search of a helping hand, a caring response, a different perspective. Sadly in our busy society most of us operate from an “I can help you if it doesn’t take too long” perspective. Those who are not true friends quickly tire of our ill at rest spirit and start to become too busy to talk. And here starts the cycle. We feel misunderstood and unloved by yet another person and go in search of another set of ears. Oh the sadness and hurt that is propagated. Hence enters the Golden Rule of choosing your ears carefully. Of not expecting new friends to take on the load, but instead meeting up with Mr. or Mrs. Friend-o’-twentyyears who knows this is just a rough patch for us, who doesn’t judge the words of sadness and hurt coming from our mouths, who knows that this is not who we are at core but that life has served an especially bitter meal we are trying to digest.

Sometimes, wrought in pain and suffering from the wounds of life, individuals will take a less optimal path. As shared by Tony Robbins in training, those pointing a gun in someone’s face have become the most significant person in that room. Surely this is the most frightening example, but one sadly too common in our society. Positions of power when acquired by those bruised by life provide the captive audience that has been missing. And people do not need to be hurt to become evil when given power, a fact none more evident than in the Stanford Prison experiment (http://www.prisonexp.org/).

But before we start out on a mission to fix and help the world, we can, and need to, start with ourselves. We need to take our own brokenness into our hands and minds, put it in front of our faces, and take a long, compassionate, and empathic look at what needs help. We have all been bruised by life in some way, something we need to be honest about, so we can heal our wounds, not judge them. We need to realize that we are doing the best we can in this crazy world while dragging the suitcases life has packed for us. But we cannot profess the world has been unfair to us, and cope by being unfair to others. As we share with toddlers, “this is not okay”.

We also cannot exclaim wishes for the world to be full of love and lacking in hatred if we are propagating both with Prejudice and Discrimination. We cannot be charismatic, generous or kind if we are exercising control over others in a discriminatory way. It is biologically natural to notice difference, but we can, and need to, cognitively reason through those biological responses so they do not manifest into acts of discrimination. We are all people trying to live our lives. If we label others, even in our minds, often they will confirm our bias, live up to our expectations and beliefs. After all we stuck a label on them. But the problem began with us, not them. Our hatred, our thoughts, our preconceived notions, our brokenness. This is why we are reacting to them in the manner that we are. We can choose to act in a respectful way to the person in front of us, even when they are not being respectful to us. We can choose to actively help others who have been hurt or forgotten in our world.

If we approach ourselves, and others, with kindness, love, respect, listening and understanding and let our inner broken self know it is loved and cared for, we will experience the lightness of a burden shared being a burden halved. We will feel loved and cared for, just for being who we are. And ultimately wasn't that what we were in search of. We can break this circle of pain.