Βethan via Compfight

This is about the kind of friend, the kind of person I want to be.

When friends or loved ones are in need, I want to show up with my whole heart to see, to listen, to comfort, to stand alongside, to hold, to cry, to make space and safety for healing vulnerability—and not to advise, or judge, analyze, or otherwise poke at their tender wounds.

When friends or loved ones act in a manner I receive as inept, stupid, hurtful, or outrageous, I want to see it in the big picture of our relationship and put it in its true perspective. Hurtful behavior is most likely a tiny blip on the screen of my relationship with the friend or loved one.  (Serial offenders are another story.)

I want to show up because we are friends, because we are loved ones.

I want to be this way, because when I am in pain, I need someone to be this way for me. And when I am inept, stupid, hurtful, or outrageous, I need someone to be this way for me.

Everyone wants to be seen and heard. Forgiven. Loved.

I am trying mightily not to be a stupid human.

But I know we are all stupid humans sometimes. I recognize that the more outrageous the behavior, the deeper the well of pain it comes from. I will forgive myself, and I will forgive others for flawed behavior.

This doesn’t mean I will submit to serial abuse. Or just sit and “take” it when another’s ineptness is hurtful. I want to learn when to run from it without looking back and when to stay and act from love and truth, but it’s not easy. It’s something I work on. In the meanwhile, I recognize even mildly inept behavior can trigger a strong primitive response in me. And when all I can feel in my body is threatened and all I can see in my head is static, yes I run. In that moment, it is sometimes the most compassionate thing I can manage.

I run—but  then I reflect.

And while I believe in the inner journey, analysis of myself and others, going back to childhood traumas and other past history, re-telling old stories, replaying situations, trying to figure out exactly what “the problem” is can be a place to get stuck.

Relentless psychoanalysis can be a fancy way of avoiding pain and putting off happiness.

I am paying attention. I am learning. I am trying, always, always trying, to be a better person. Trying to improve my relationship with myself and others. So now what?

I just want to be. I want to get out of analysis and thought and just be.

And this is how I want to be for friends, loved ones, others:

I want to be love. I want to love others and myself. Just love. Because that’s all we really have here on earth. All. We. Have.

Let all the rest go, Mary Ann.  Let it go, let it go, let it go.