Today I went ‘postal’.
My eldest daughter hurt my youngest, in the endless tyranny of sibling development & relationship. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t dramatic, it was small and understated in fact, but I took it to a whole new level. The minutiae of the event is unnecessary to regurgitate but in reflection, in these moments where I wonder, will I ever learn to do this right? I look at what feelings trigger me to feel so mad.
And the words that form in my mind, over and over again, are ‘why can’t they just be reasonable’.
And I realise that so much of my anger, so much of making people Wrong (for that is what anger is) is my belief that they are being Unreasonable.
The absolute blessing and privilege of my children is that I know that they are of pure heart, so when I judge them, in this case, to be unreasonable, I know clearly, without murkiness, that it’s ‘my stuff’. In relationships with other adults, I can really justify why they aren’t reasonable. I can justify why my mother’s needs to express her thoughts are not reasonable; why my friend’s need to bring up her child differently to me are not reasonable; why my husband is so endlessly unreasonable….. But my children, I cannot hide from them, when I make them unreasonable, then I know it is I who needs to look within.
So I am tossing this word around my head – reasonable, reasonable, reasonable. And I am wondering why I am so fixated with it and, mostly, how have I managed to create myself and the judge and jury of what is reasonable? Why is my way the best way, in fact, the only way? Where did my standard of ‘reason’ come from? Part of the confusion around this lies with my belief that on so many occasions I offer the ‘voice of reason’, laying out a plethora of options to account for all manner of tastes and requirements, so having stretched myself wide, when someone dare suggest that their needs are even further out of that range…. PING….Snap… Postal…..
I am still mulling all these thoughts over and have yet to uncover and bring to light the tight and suffocating need to contain reason. All I do know is that my stretch for myself as I process this pathway is to allow myself and others to be unreasonable – in the very best possible way.