There is brokenness that leads to re-building, improved character, renewed strength, refreshed creativity.
I believe this capacity lives within us all.
I have seen this with my own eyes; men and women build beautiful lives after devastation, loss, betrayal and untold grief.
There’s brokenness that leads to bitterness, regret, desire for revenge and retribution.
It, too, lives in us all.
Stubbornness, coldness of heart, perhaps based in a desire for justification, provokes a tough journey.
I’ve seen men and women “go stubborn” and “go bitter” and be lead by the nose to destinations unbearable.
Brokeness, some, not all, is inevitable, comes packaged with life, time, age, growth and misplaced or misunderstood levels of trust.
Some comes as a result of pride and selfishness — or the rather simple but trustworthy principle of reaping what we’ve sown.
What will you do with yours?
Your brokenness?
What will I do with mine?
Our response — and it need not be immediate for wisdom is seldom knee-jerk — is a crucial choice.
It is not an easy choice, but choice is where it all begins – a little like Robert Frost’s “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”
A choice to build and learn, a choice not to defend or attack, a choice to love in the face of rejection, a choice to give people what they ask for, a choice to engage, or not – perhaps the choice less travelled, will make the difference.
Allow yourself to experience your emotions – even the extremes. Don’t cover or hide from your grief. If you are feeling joy, express it. Avoid constructing a wall or barrier between you and your emotions. The day may come when you cannot see over the barrier, let alone climb the wall.
Take time to hear as many “sides” to every story. Don’t rush to judgment. There are usually 7, 8, even 10 sides to every story. Hear them all. Things are often not as they appear. Listeners take all the time needed to hear things out.
As far as you’re capable, go back and make right where you have failed. Often, this may be impossible. Make a list of your regrets, determine never to move in those directions again. Learn, recover, learn recover.
Even if it’s not in your usual habit, try to talk more to people you care about about the things you care about. Don’t rehash hobby horses. Let people into unexpressed parts of your thinking.
Notice your indifference. This is where you’ve been unmoved, unaffected, by things that ought to move everybody, ought to affect everybody. Allow the world about you, near and afar, to have its impact on you.
One corner of my home office……. you’re welcome here.
I think my disdain for the sheer evil was discerned early on in my military basics when a breath-reeking dirty-mouthed two-striper screamed into my face from such proximity that I could smell and see his back teeth.
Mixing Afrikaans and English he proclaimed with anger that by the time he was finished and done, “finished and klaar,” with me, me specifically, I would be a real soldier, an “ordentlike soldaat.”
He said I would be able to march, not walk, march, in those shiny boots right over my mother’s dead body and feel nothing, nothing at all.
I gathered my thoughts.
He waited.
He expected the routine.
He waited for me to jump to attention and scream, “Ja, Bombardier. Bombardier is always correct, Bombardier,” in Afrikaans.
This response was expected, an individual response when addressed as an individual, or blurted in unison if addressed as a group. There were times it reminded me or 7-year-olds singing their times tables for a teacher.
“Do you know that you are stupid, and you are for nothing good?” would be said to all of us.
“Ja, Bombardier. You are correct, Bombardier. Bombardier is always correct, Bombardier,” we had to reply but in Afrikaans.
Agreement was essential no matter what insults were hurled.
This particular insult, that we were for nothing good, I found amusing. The “for nothing good” is a direct translation from Afrikaans and the bombardier would have had no idea how stupid he sounded in his desire to parade comfort in both official languages.
This time was different.
This was no routine insult.
He was screaming at me about my Mother, a woman he did not know, a woman about whom he knew nothing.
He was addressing me, a man he did not know.
A man about whom he knew nothing.
A man he had spent no time trying to know.
He was shouting so all could hear and be impressed by his evil aspirations with words tailored for me.
I waited.
I did not jump to attention and scream “Ja, Bombardier. Bombardier is always correct, Bombardier.”
I did come to attention and yelled, “Bombardier!”
Then, rather quietly, having now gained his full attention, I told the depraved man, in my faulty Afrikaans, as faulty as his English, that despite all of his efforts, I would indeed never, not ever, not in a thousand years, would I be that soldier.
I talked quietly and I was clear.
The bombardier appeared taken aback that I would dare reply with an unanticipated response.
He backed off.
In his retreat he did not send me or the whole squad running to the fence or make all of us do 30 push-ups. He moved away, stepping backwards, losing eye contact for brief seconds as his eyes darted seeking back-up from fellow bombardiers.
I did not drop my gaze.
I gave him all the eye-contact he ever could want.
Somehow, waiting to reply had knocked him off balance, stopped him in his tracks.
His peers made no moves of support.
He was alone in this and he knew it.
Perhaps it made him think of his mother but I will never know.
A violation had occurred and I refused to cooperate with pure evil.
He kept his distance.
He limited his involvement with our particular squad and seemed to forever regard me with suspicion mixed with a dose of fear and healthy respect.
That’s all I wanted; a lot of respect for my Mother and a little respect for me.
And, I wanted not to be that soldier.
Not ever.
So, I told him.
I wanted him to know I would never be that soldier.
When people discover I was “in the army” they usually express disbelief.
I’m perfectly fine with it.
If a war-story is told or I am asked directly about military service in the SADF my default reply is that I was a terrible soldier.
It is true.
I was.
Even visualizing myself as a soldier is a stretch.
But, I was one, really.
I was conscripted into the South African Defense Force like all white South African boys my age.
There is a lot more to my year in the army which I usually reduce to “terrible soldier” but I do avoid when-I-was-in-the-army stories.
I will not pretend it was a good season for me.
Real war stories told by real soldiers and sailors who fought in brutal wars can be tiresome and there is already enough that is tiresome, told, and retold, and exaggerated, without my adding my two bits.
On the occasion I seek reminding about the horrors of war and the evils of which we humans are capable, I open Wilfred Owen’s 1920 poem, Dulce et Decorum est and I’m satisfied.
Fully.
Owen warns against the glorification war and I never came close to one.
Like Owen, I too have seen human evil, thankfully not to the degree he recounts, but I do know it requires no uniform.
I’d rather leave war stories to war heroes and those who are able to hold an audience.
My dad was a war hero.
For him it was frighteningly close.
Extraordinarily personal.
How much closer, more personal can it be than knowing your two best friends (my brother has their names) were killed in an upper-deck explosion while you scrambled off the side of a kamikaze-wounded destroyer into the Indian Ocean in the hopes of finding safety as your ship disappeared from beneath you within 8 minutes?
Able Seaman 67799 EWG Smith was 19 years and 4 months old when he took to the water searching for life and safety.
There is nothing like a good listener for feeding the soul.
A good listener determines there will be no distractions — no phones, text checking, no dings or app notifications or glances to see the time — and will offer complete and uninterrupted and undiluted attention to the speaker.
A good listener listens, says very very little except may offer occasional brief words of encouragement like “tell me more” or “go back to the beginning if you want” or “go into as much detail as you think will be helpful” or “could you tell me that again so it’s clearer for me.”
The good listener knows listening and any attempts at multitasking — even the most subtle — distract the speaker and obliterate listening. A good listener gets all the potential impediments to listening out of the way before sitting down to listen.
The good listener knows a listener’s inner-noise —- things the listener is refusing to hear or address from within — will emerge and sabotage attempts at hearing others and so addresses unresolved personal matters as much as possible so others may encounter a clear-headed listener.
The good listener does not formulate replies or develop counterpoints while listening and does not one-up the speaker with the listener’s own experiences whether they may appear to the listener to be helpful or not.
A good listener sees, hears, knows, acknowledges the speaker by listening — the most powerful and tangible expression of love.
I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
Until then, if you so choose, I’ll listen as you tell me as much or as little as you want about your losses.
It makes no difference to me how much time has passed since your loss, your let-down, your crises. I know time passed makes little or no difference to your enduring pain even if you’re able at times to mask it.
So, bring it on.
I’m listening. I’m reading.
I will be as present for you as is humanly possible. I’ll listen to every word you say and listen for those you don’t say. I’ll read every sentence you’ve written and ask you to say more if there’s any hint of necessity to read between the lines. I’ll study what you present as though I’m preparing for an examination.
When we talk or as you write please note I’d welcome a thorough tour of the love you enjoyed, the way it was when it
was at its very best. If it’s a spouse, friend, job at the crux of the loss you’ve endured, please, tell me too, about the good times. This will allow me to more fully appreciate what you’ve suffered.
I know it’s tough to read (and it’s not easy to write, either) but if you lost a baby, a child (at any age), I want you to know I think I’m brave enough to hear you out.
If it scares me, I’ll tell you. If it scares you, let me know, and we can leave it be, or…..whatever you decide.
The invitation stands.
WhatsApp, email, FaceTime…..if we’re in the same area, we can meet face-to-face, once, twice or more.
May your heart be jam-packed with great expectations and sufficiently resilient to embrace those unfamiliar with indiscriminate human warmth.
Love is tough for those for whom it is foreign.
May you experience the goodness of which you are capable and possess the courage to allow its full way with you.
Take yourself by surprise.
May you have childlike eyes and be filled with joy and wonder as you see the familiar in new and childlike ways.
May your curiosity be contagious.
May your thoughts dwell on the goodness around you and your focus on designing your fulfilling and adventurous future.
May your enthusiasm impart strength to others.
May your words be soft, sweet, encouraging, while you remain unafraid to speak your mind with conviction.
May your words comfort and provoke all who hear you.
May your hands bring comfort, kindness, relief to those, who, for reasons of historic political atrocities or recent political divides, may least expect it from you.
May your love continually and persistently obliterate stereotypes and prejudices.
May your most treasured friendships deepen, your broken friendships find healing, and all malice, contempt and indifference from you, and for you, cease.
May you embrace and love your friends, former friends, enemies and detractors.
Captured with permission – a t-shirt in Curitiba, Brazil
difficultrelationships.com 