The Voice of Reason

In a recent discussion with a therapist it was suggested that I was, at times, too reasonable(!). Not only that, but by being too reasonable I was actually hurting myself. 

My husband raised his eyebrows when I told him this, clearly he did not agree! 

But I have been sitting with it; churning it over in my mind and of course as a result I have had the most unreasonable couple of weeks I could ever have imagined. 

Everyone and everything has felt desperately unreasonable. 

One days notice from a teacher at school that the cake ingredients rules have changed as I prepare for my child’s birthday. Unreasonable. 

Car insurers wanting me to provide information that they know better than me. Unreasonable. 

My child wetting the bed twice in one night. Unreasonable. 

My babysitter cancelling a two month standing booking less than a week before. Unreasonable. 

The resident permit zone being arbitrarily changed so that our property is no longer granted a permit. Un-bloody-reasonable. 

And then there’s the bigger stuff… 

• the school mum throwing her unmet needs in my face 
• my husband having a ‘moment’ and wondering if I’m really the right one (yes that happened!)
• my mother refusing to take any accountability for her behaviour 

These are the bigger life hurdles when someone else’s choices can feel so utterly and desperately unreasonable and yet I am very good at making them reasonable. I am very good at looking behind the gauze and finding the reasons, the pain, the whys and the because; and understanding why everyone’s behaviour or choices are the way they are. 

A good skill? Compassionate? Able to hold the bigger picture? 

I need to segue a moment… when my friend Kim was dying, we talked about the emotional trauma that may have contributed to her illness. Kim was utterly reasonable. She always found a way to walk on a higher plain, she didn’t want to stoop to the level of those who had wounded her so deeply. And that is so honourable and so ‘right’, right? Except that all that justifiable anger and pain stayed inside and perhaps it is what killed her… 

So I have sat with my flair of fire, this rage of witnessing the unreasonable and I have held it in conflict with my desire to be so thoughtful and measured and kind. 

And then I exploded. 

My husband lit the touch paper and I vomited out my rage at all the holding I do for everyone else’s ‘unreasonable’ choices. 

And he held me there. 

He held me there when I poured out my anger, my grief and my own unreasonable demands. 

And he listened, and he heard me. And for the very first time, I felt safe. 

It is the hardest thing in the world to hold someone in their pain, just hold them, not fix them, not wrong them, not right them or join them. But just to listen and be with that flow of emotions. And I love him more than ever for being courageous enough to do so. 

Because sometimes the emotionally healthy thing to be is utterly unreasonable. 

I needed that exorcism as part of my own healing and now I am calm again and able to bear the weight of all of life’s reasons….