LEAVING PEOPLE BEHIND - Part ll
We can’t love everybody, keep up with everybody, and hopefully there isn’t much need to stay with people who make our lives worse.A bit more perspective:
- We must give thanks for all the people who have not left us, who stayed while we stumbled, fell, learned and grew. Teachers. Friends. Parents. Ministers or Rabbis. Relatives. Significant others. Consider contacting at least one person today to express your gratitude for their support.
- If you have not left someone behind who tried your patience and almost convinced you to give up (though you never wanted to), be proud of your persistence.
- It’s a serious mistake and common folly to leave people behind all too easily, for not very good reasons. I wonder how many more people we could keep up with if we weren’t so in love with the television.
- Do you think it possible that someone in your life feels forced to stay with you?
- Pay special attention to people when they cry. Tears let us know that people are hurting and the lives of real, tender people are in our hands.
- A friend says, “The phone works two ways.” There are all kinds of people who look like they have stopped caring about you and they never call, write, or visit. That’s life. It hurts, but here is the balm: pay more attention to those who do show their caring, give them VIP status in your heart, and feed on their love.
- You can’t hurt people and expect them to like you. And don’t think that you can keep getting hurt by someone and still like him or her—it’s impossible. Your sensitive heart will protest and turn to ice.
For more on the above theme, we welcome back Peter Cottontail from another extended vacation and we enter his form.
A form is the name of a rabbit’s personal home. A warren is the name of the suburb where a group of rabbits live. Read INTO THE FORM to enter the home of Peter Cottontail, Dig Consultant. Peter will field your questions, take us deeper into issues, challenge me at times, and be the resident reminder of the unexpected and the adventurous. Rabbits are into “action” (sex) even more than human beings, so Peter Cottontail will also be The Dig’s official sex therapist. He can handle your sexy kind of questions with utter confidentiality, sensitivity, and aplomb.
In this visit to “The Form” you will get to hear more from Peter’s library.
INTO THE FORM OF PETER COTTONTAIL
Bob: This topic of “leaving people behind” is so complex that I wish you had come back from vacation sooner.
Peter: I had internet access in Italy and I’ve kept up with the Digs. Your thinking is as balanced as it could be for such a thorny subject. But I’d leave people sooner than you would, and not just because I’m fast like a bunny.
Bob: Wouldn’t you feel guilty?
Peter: It depends. I don’t have that vague, omnipresent unconscious guilt that plagues a lot of good people. My guilt is usually specific and targeted. Looking back, I feel very guilty about leaving my first wife. I was a dumb adolescent and I didn’t know what I was doing. But I don’t feel guilty for leaving people behind who continually hurt me. I give them a few warnings and then I’m off to greener pastures.
Bob: Is there a correlation between quick exits and self-respect?
Peter: Not necessarily. People with low self-esteem can often leave people more quickly because they can’t handle the ordinary pains of relationships—to them a whisper seems like a shout and a shout feels like a punch. However, as you well know, people with low self-esteem usually don’t see their options and they stay in traps for a regrettably long time.
Bob: You say you move quickly away from hurtful relationships. What can help people get out of bad situations sooner?
Peter: What was that great line about anger that you learned in therapy school?
Bob: Anger has within it the seeds of self-respect.
Peter: Yes, I’ve always loved that concept. People will get out of traps sooner if they listen to their anger because anger always has some semblance of self-respect in it. Anger can be rather messy, hard to manage, but it is a sign to others that we take ourselves seriously.
Bob: I think it is a bit trickier than what you say and it has taken me years to figure this out—and I’m not sure I’m right. I think that anger is often a side-show where we actually don’t take ourselves seriously, but instead rip into others because we don’t have the self-definition to listen to our own pain and do something different about the situation.
Peter: I think you better give me an example of what you are talking about.
Bob: Well, suppose I don’t like you as a friend anymore because you never bathe and you hurt me with your sarcasm in every conversation. If I don’t have the guts to confront you in a calm and firm manner, or don’t believe that I can find better friends, then I can just blow up at you and hope you will either change or end our friendship.
Peter: In that case we are screaming at ourselves when we scream at other people. It’s half “get off my foot” and half “why do I keep putting my foot in your way.”
Bob: So ongoing anger may be a sign that we don’t take ourselves seriously because we are not doing anything about the situation. We’re just waiting for the other person to listen to our anger—and they may have tuned out us and our anger years ago. Ongoing anger is the sign that nobody is tuned into us—it’s a loud noise that keeps repeating with no change happening in life. And it’s far harder to create our own lives and define our own limits than it is to get angry and hope that the other person will take care of everything.
Peter: How can we learn to respect ourselves more?
Bob: We do need people to treat us well. We need so much affirmation and love of all types—and we need to take in that love and agree with it. If a thousand men call you pretty or smart, you need to believe it. The respect of others becomes self-respect. And so we need a community of love and lots of good relationships.
Peter: As we get older, we realize that relationships mean more than anything. It is a shame all we let slip through our fingers because of poor management of our time, our priorities, and our ability to stay connected. So I very much admire you ringing this bell.
Bob: What did you think of what I said about God and heaven?
Peter: I think of Mary Rabbit down the road who has been shafted by miserable parents, two husbands, a crummy boss and a body racked with arthritis. She’s as kind a person as you could meet—and I hope to hell there’s a heaven for someone like her (and not that I might not slip down to her mailbox tonight and leave her a hundred dollars and try to make her life better here on earth.) We’ve got to make heaven begin now.
FROM THE LIBRARY OF PETER COTTONTAIL
"There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for 'melancholy of relationships past.' It grows and prospers as life progresses, forcing you finally, against your grain, to listen to country music."
– Kary Mullis, in his Nobel Prize lecture, Dec. 8, 1993
"Humans are peculiar creatures. We are capable of much, yet do little. Doubt, insecurity, fear and ambition blind our wide-open eyes to the colors of meaningful life. We hibernate, deep in the bellies of our comfort zones... Do you want to expand your world? Meet interesting people? Learn about different cultures? Then get on your hands and knees, drop to your belly and squirm under the fence that surrounds your insulated life."
– from the preface and back cover of People Stories, Inside the Outside.
Part l Part ll Part lll Part lV