Remembering

Photo by Anastasia Belousova

Last week my husband and I got into a big fight.

Huge, actually. Ugly. One of those that leave a person like me on the floor with swollen eyes and snot hanging from my nose.

It didn’t have to be huge. In fact, I’d put a lot of the severity of my reaction on my hormones, but that’s a blog post for another day. Or another platform. No one wants to hear a women whine about her period.

So, what was the fight about? Does it really matter? Does it ever matter?

OK, yes. It matters. Fights dig up things that address real emotional needs we have as human beings. Anger and resentment and regret. Emotions are indicators of our priorities and our perspective, and demonstrate to us whether we are handling those priorities in a healthy way for ourselves.

So, fights can be really good things if you let them. They uncover our own personal truths, bring clarity to our lives – highlight changes we need to make.

But if there’s one thing this reminded me of, it’s that we need to be the change we want to see in our world. Pointing fingers is never productive.

And after this past year and a half, pointing fingers is supposed to be something I left behind me. It’s supposed to be something I did before I knew better. It’s supposed to be a thing that people do when they don’t have the wisdom I’ve been granted as of late.

Ah, but life is a constant forgetting.

It’s incredible, really, how the human condition is just so damn messy. We never get to this point in life where we have it all figured out and then get to sit on our tower looking down, smiling in a perceptive, compassionate way at the silly things people do to make themselves miserable and disempowered. We never reach “enlightenment”, but rather have moments of clarity that give us glimpses of true wisdom, and then they fade like the scent of flowers on the breeze. Here and then gone, just like that.

The fight, of course, was about a miscommunication. Something we weren’t seeing the same way. Some frustration we had about one of us not manipulating themselves properly to make life easier on the other. Because that’s what marriage is, right? That’s what we are all supposed to do for one another – make ourselves into someone that ensures the comfort and security of others in our presence. Forsaking our own comforts and priorities for the other…

A year ago, we had a similar fight – maybe the exact same fight, to be honest. When you are married for long enough you realize that fights are generally just repetitions of the same fundamental issues. Core values or perspectives that are out of alignment and manifest as arguments about toilet paper or TV choices.

But a year ago I addressed it differently. I let it go immediately and instead turned to appreciation and understanding. We just didn’t have the space for disagreement in our lives. We needed each other and at the time that sense of urgency meant we focused differently on the precious moments we had. It didn’t matter who spent money on what or who forgot to bring home the milk. What mattered was how lucky we were to have each other to lean on instead of facing the storm alone.

This, of course, is always the ideal scenario – lean into love. Let go of the rest. Put attention in the places that make you feel good. Because the alternative is awful. And why choose misery?

Why do we choose being right over being happy?

Since we have returned home and started putting the pieces back together for our “new life”, there has been so much forgetting. So many missed opportunities to apply that wisdom I so needed to survive this past year. Now we have the luxury of comfort and routine. We aren’t living life by the second, but are now thinking of days, weeks, months down the road. We are building our businesses back up and the girls are planning Halloween costumes and birthday parties. I am here wearing other hats besides “Medical Mother” and am tripping over toys and dogs and Matt’s socks again.

And old habits die hard. Old arguments stay sticky. Old fears creep back in.

But you can teach an old dog new tricks, you just have to stay on top of it.

I’ve got the lessons still fresh in my mind. Don’t sweat the small stuff. What you focus upon grows. People will rise to meet your expectations. You can’t ever control conditions or other people, but you can control the way you see them. Love is always the answer.

I was always so good in school at understanding the curriculum. Give me the explanation and I can translate it right back to you in full. I can even teach it to others. No sweat. But ask me to apply it to my own life? Get me to do the actual work? That’s another story.

But you can only get away with that for so long. You have to practice what you preach. Ask my daughters. They are old enough now to call me out on all of it.

You know, Mom, he’s really trying. He has to work really hard to pay for our house and stuff. He’s probably thinking about a lot of other things and that’s why he forgot again. He’s probably really tired. That’s why he’s grumpy. He’s probably sad and angry about this past year, too. But boys don’t cry. Girls cry. So maybe it’s just the same thing for both of you, even if it looks different.

They’re always right. It is the same thing. It’s all the same thing, just in different colors. We are all human beings trying to get a grip and stay on top and find ways to feel better. All compensating for things we feel are missing or amiss and trying to put it on others – on something. We don’t want to hurt each other. We just don’t want ourselves to hurt. And we are all just trying to figure it all out with a minimal amount of fallout.

We are all just trying to remember. Because the wisdom is there. It’s always there. It’s just so damn easy to forget.