Choose your views
This piece is from the series “A Loving Lens,” a collection of essays written to help us consider what else is possible…
“He said my back collapsed and it was a mess from all the surgeries,’ Mom repeated, this time stressing the same words the doctor did.
“He said what…?”
What was she supposed to do with this bombshell aimed for her morale? A disempowering missile thoughtlessly launched at her suggestibility, one that turned her body into a repository for the doctor’s semantic shrapnel.
True, she’d had multiple surgeries over the course of eight decades, all of which obliged her spine to adapt, but the current spasms were subsiding. After weeks in the hospital she was newly home and learning to walk again. Her body was healing, but with the doctor’s words echoing she doubted its ability to recover.
This was the same body that survived childhood trauma, brought three human beings into the world, spawned eighteen more, and kept her vibrantly active into her ninth decade of Life…now fragile but still holding a ferocious will. The doctor had overlooked its noble history.
She leaned on the walker, unsure now if it would support her next step.
His words had seared fear into her, injecting struggle into her already formidable challenges. A mess, though inelegant and undesirable, can be cleaned up with some effort, A collapse leaves only rubble to work with in its wake, presumably shattered into so many pieces it will never again be whole.
“Pretty sure a ‘mess’ is NOT a professional diagnosis, Mommy! He’s just blaming your body beecause he doesn’t have an answer. Don’t listen! If he knew what he was talking about he’d’ve come up with something a lot better. Besides, look at you - you’re gliding!!” I said, highlighting her progress.
She sighed. Facts didn’t melt her feelings. The lexical hex stuck to her thoughts, vexing her momentum and movements, galvanizing me to pry it off. His inaccurate words came embedded with traction, suction derived from the social capital of doctor-dom. He had studied for years to get a degree in decrees. He was her medical team captain and was ostensibly trying to help, yet in order to align with him she had to concur with his corrosive conclusion. Taking one for the team meant sacrificing her own knowing, and viewing her body as a mangled mass of detritus rather than a brilliant array of resilient, unfathomable beauty. She could invest in his authority or…reach for her own.
There will always be someone who claims to know best by telling you the worst.
Someone who presumes to know better than you what’s best for you, even those who appropriate the mic from inside your inner circle.
Trusting yourself sometimes requires retrofitting distrust in others, divesting them of the conferred credibility that has ridden on your vulnerability.
Beware of the conviction cocktail, unsolicited and often served with a mix of generic but emphatic imprecision (“It’s a mess!”) and a splash of apocalyptic analogy (bodies imploding and collapsing!).
If the concocter’s proficiency depends on your deficiency, red flag flying high!
When someone lobs you a shrinker, a sentence that deflates your natural state of goodness and hope, drop it like the scalding potato it is.
We get to choose our views.
So before investing in someone else’s limitations, …consider
Who is the best muse for your views?
The teacher who resents your talent? The parent who regrets their own choices? The spouse who fears your freedom? The religious authority with a compromised moral compass? A society that needs a scapegoat?
Are these who you authorize as wise enough to be the authorities of your own stories?
It’s easy to forget no one is superior to your interior you can’t certify Light
So how can we choose to lose unhelpful feedback, those unwarranted warrants that spew torrents of doubt? How can we discard what Simon Says and replace it with our own inner wisdom?
We can help each other out!
We can
be mindful and discerning concerning words unyielding in feeling their accuracy.
We can
Contemplate. Recognize that when we feel pressure to know the answers (aka needing to be right to be safe), it’s easy to speak reflexively rather than reflectively. Fast has a way of discarding what’s vast.
Refrain from proclaiming especially when reframing things for our own benefit. When people are vulnerable, we have a heightened responsibility to encourage their stability.
Words can trigger vigor or wither it. They can Sow life or strife.
Know that what you say can help a person find their way or lead them astray. You choose. For you too.