The Mercury / Monday

Embarking on the Fearless Journey

The power of repair, of change comes, not because you buy a new car, get a new job, or ditch your wife for a new one. It begins nowhere else but in the deepest recesses of your soul.

For the journey you (“we” – I am on it too) will require a steel will, pencil and paper, humility, and an open heart.

Then…

1. Face yourself. It’s impossible to be genuine with others while you are fooling yourself. Tell yourself the truth about yourself. Unwind, dismantle, your self-lies and pretensions and sophistications. Despite your fears, you will probably not fall apart. My hunch is you’ll “fall together” and become a more beautiful than you can imagine.

2. Open up. Be more vulnerable. Let others, but not all others, in. Tell people who love you what terrifies you. Expose your masks, the facades you fear losing. Tell them about what you fear will be exposed. But, take your time. The cover-up has taken a lifetime. It won’t be repaired overnight, or without pain.

3. Set yourself on a “highest good” track: for yourself first, for others, second. Do no harm and try to avoid people and organizations that do. Promote the empowering and the wellbeing of others. This is most tangibly done through acts of generosity, service, and forgiveness.

(If you “like” it, please “share” – thanks.)

What goes on in your parent heart? I know what goes on in mine, I think.

Mine’s like the furnace – something not usually found in South African houses – in middle of winter. The furnace never turns off. My parent heart (or head) is working, thinking, planning, hoping, watching.

There are times it’s distracted, but it’s never off duty. There are times it’s filled with anxiety and it can feel like it’s tumbling out of control.

There are times love doesn’t always feel like love and feel like something quite different. It can feel like rising anger or a lightning jolt of protection. I see it expressed as I unwittingly scan the surroundings for dangers and potential dangers.

I experience my heart as hoping beyond hope and wanting the seemingly impossible for my sons. I experience it as sometimes ignoring my own needs and placing all things on hold until I know what the boys may need.

My heart (or my head) is constantly shifting through priorities, trying to identify what is crucial from what is necessary to what is mere waste. Sometimes, really only occasionally, it feels broken by a lapse in a son’s integrity or a harsh word or a moment of son-to-son betrayal – but it is thankfully, quick to recover.

Tell me what yours is like – please.

“But there is one thing that has power completely, and that is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.” – Rev. Theophilus Msimangu, Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton