Sometimes you have to fall in ways you didn't expect.
Sometimes are dark.
I sometimes fall for the illusion that life is supposed to be perfect and happy every moment. It isn't and I don't take my own personal failings that well. It can become such a cluster of emotions, your own hurts, your own feelings that you kept in, intermingled with the things you failed at, it cause thunderstorms in your mind.
Failure is a good teacher. We will all inevitably hurt someone or make a mistake or screw up in some way, even if we like to pretend we don't. Failure is always opportunity, because it gives you a chance to grow and become better. My husband kept trying to encourage me but I kept going "stop giving me platitudes" because failure being an opportunity isn't what you want to hear when you feel like you're falling apart.
Then I go back and I realize that he's completely right. When you mess up, when something goes wrong, when you feel broken, all you can do is go up from there. My personal struggle is motivating myself to go forward when I feel frozen by sadness. I'm taking my tiny victories where I find them. I may have fallen apart but I have certainly fallen in far more spectacular fashion. So hey, points to me.
“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
“If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
Jean Vanier is probably my favorite human. I have talked about him so often on here. The quotes above are so challenging to me. I hate vulnerability, I like my mask that my life is one big happy perfection. Yet, sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing. All you can do in failure is first own it, have the integrity to say "yeah I screwed up" and then try to go from there. Far easier said than done.
Loving people and growing in love means the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. Every time I see that I'm somewhat shorn. Suffering, constant effort, and repeated choices doesn't actually sound like a good time. Then I look at my life and my family and the complexities of relationships and I get that hey, those things often include suffering, effort, and choice.
“People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
That always smacks me too. While this reminds me to be gentle with myself, because in order to make a change in my life I can't be constantly flagellant and prone in shame. It also reminds me how to respond to my own anger.
Communities need tensions if they are to grow and deepen. Tensions come from conflicts within each person - conflicts born out of a refusal of personal and community growth, conflicts between individual egoisms, conflicts arising from a diminishing gratitude, from a class of temperaments and from individual psychological difficulties. These are natural tensions. Anguish is the normal reaction to being brought up against our own limitations and darkness, to the discovery of our deep wound. Tension is the normal reaction to responsibilities we find hard because they make us feel insecure. We all weep and grieve inwardly at the successive deaths of our own interests.
. . . When everything is going well, when the community feels it is living successfully, its members tend to let their energies dissipate, and to listen less carefully to each other. Tensions bring people back to the reality of their helplessness; obliging them to spend more time in prayer and dialogue, to work patiently to overcome the crisis and refind lost unity; making them understand that the community is more than just a human reality, that it also needs the spirit of God if it is to live and deepen.
I am told that there is a Chinese word for 'crisis' which means 'opportunity and danger'. Every tension, every crisis can become a source of new life if we approach it wisely, or it can bring death and division.”
― Jean Vanier, Community And Growth
This gets me good. I HATE tension, confrontation, I hate people not liking me, I worry, I want to people please. Tension and conflict are one of the only ways you will ever grow with people. We do it naturally with our spouses and parents (and yes sometimes very wrong) but ideally it should be with someone you know is going to love you no matter how angry you are or what you say. So then you resolve your tension and become closer. Resolution being the key factor.
So, here I am with my inner failings and having to confront my own wounds. I am encouraged when he says anguish is the normal reaction. I feel that and it sucks. However, there is no place of stasis in life. We will all move and learn and grow and change. We will all encounter hills and valleys.
“But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviors of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time. (163)”
― Jean Vanier, Becoming Human