I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me, but I’m more and more susceptible to being inspired or at least informed by quotes on the internet.
This week’s example comes through my wonderful coworker Dee from the thinker and speaker Parker Palmer, which she shared with me in the course of a conversation about raising kids – a topic on which Dee has a deep well of wisdom.
In the face of our deepest questions… our habit of advising each other reveals its shadow side. If the shadow could speak its logic, I think it would say something like this: “If you take my advice, you will surely solve your problem, If you take my advice but fail to solve your problem, you did not try hard enough. If you fail to take my advice I did the best I could so I am covered. No matter how things come out, I no longer need to worry about you or your vexing problem.”
The shadow behind the “fixes” we offer for issues that we cannot fix is, ironically, the desire to hold each other at bay. It is a strategy for abandoning each other while appearing to be concerned. Perhaps this explains why one of the most common laments of our time is that no one really sees me, hears me, or understands me. How can we understand another when instead of listening deeply, we rush to repair that person in order to escape further involvement? The sense of isolation and invisibility that marks so many lives is not least the lives of young people, whom we constantly try to fix. It is due in part to a mode of “helping” that allows us to dismiss each other.
When you speak to me about your deepest questions, you do not want to be fixed or saved; you want to be seen and heard, to have your truth acknowledged and honored…so the best service I can render when you speak to me about such a struggle is to hold you faithfully in a space where you can listen to your inner teacher.
(The emphases are mine.)