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Bonds That
Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves
by
C. Terry Warner
Editors'
Note: Starting today, Meridian will be serializing Terry Warner's
much anticipated book which gives remarkable and unpredictable insights
into human relationships and the quality of our hearts. For years,
an earlier version of this book was so highly sought, that a copy
center in Provo kept the draft on hand for those eager to read it.
Now it has been finished and published and you can read it on Meridian.
A Day When
I Lost It
Susan
and I named one of our sons Matthew, which means "gift of God."
During the early months of his life I would dance around his crib
in my pajamas, singing. Some of the songs I made up as I went along,
some I had learned from my mother, and one my grandfather had taught
me many years earlier:
Matthew, Matthew
was a fine old man,
Washed his face
in a frying pan,
Combed his hair
with a wagon wheel,
And died with
a toothache in his heel.
Susan would
laugh. It was the best of times.
Thirteen years
later Matthew appeared one afternoon at the bathroom doorway and
yelled, "When're you going to get it fixed, huh, Dad?" The downstairs
toilet had been broken for several days, which meant Matthew had
to use the bathroom upstairs where I was changing the baby's diaper.
I closed my
eyes for a moment and took my time acknowledging his presence. My
ears began to heat up a little. How dare he talk to his father that
way?
I didn't raise
my voice. Instead I set the reeking diaper in the diaper pail and
observed my son standing stiffly in the doorway, arms crossed, waiting
for an answer. I said, very slowly, "I am not going to answer a
question put to me in that tone of voice."
"So you're not
even going to talk to your own son, huh?"
I did not say
the next thing that came into my mind, which was, "I'm not going
to talk to my son until he can speak respectfully to me." Nevertheless,
he responded with a defiant "Oh yeah?" in his eyes. For a fleeting
moment this reminded me of his bright eyes and spirited bearing
when, at the age of nine, he sang "Wells Fargo Wagon" in the university
musical. How had that charming child turned into a teenager whom,
for that moment at least, I would have been happy to have out of
my sight?
Summoning up
my patience, I briefly considered explaining how I had tried to
fix the toilet that very afternoon-but then decided he didn't deserve
the courtesy of an answer. The growing pressure of my silence was
making him squirm. "Fine!" he finally exclaimed, and he huffed out
the door, through the house, and down the driveway toward the Hickmans'.
Probably to use their bathroom.
"Oh, brother!"
I heard myself say.
Hadn't I answered
with perfect self-control? Hadn't Matthew become even more impudent?
What more can a father do when his son acts like that? I picked
up the baby and told myself to forget about the whole episode.
Not half an
hour later I heard Matthew talking with Susan in the laundry room.
He was complaining that I was so far gone I wouldn't even talk with
my own children. Susan didn't say anything in response-she didn't
even try to correct him! All I could hear besides Matthew's complaints
was the hum of the dryer and the clicking of the snaps on the clothes
going round and round inside. Couldn't Susan see he had her eating
out of his hand?
I decided to
get myself downstairs to make sure the broken toilet wasn't overflowing.
I didn't want to give Susan and Matthew more evidence against me
than they already had. On the way down I nearly tripped on a pile
of clothes Matthew had left on the stairway landing. For a fleeting
instant I felt like yelling, "What are these clothes doing here?"
But I didn't
yell. Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, all my resentful thoughts gave
way to silence. As quickly as I took my next step, I could see for
the first time what I had been doing, as if light had broken through
a crack in the ceiling of my mind. I had been looking upon my own
son as my enemy! How could I have done that? How could I have been
finding satisfaction in catching him in a fault? How could I have
demeaned a person I loved so well?
I knew the conventional
wisdom-you need to come down hard on a boy who acts defiantly, not
let him get away with it, give him a swift kick in the pants, take
away his privileges. But had I done any of those things, I would
have felt even worse than I did. The truth that mattered was not
that he had been mistreating me-perhaps he had, but that's not what
stopped me in my tracks. The truth that mattered was that I had
been mistreating him.
How
Could This Have Happened?
Matthew had been a toddler when his sister Emily was born.
While Susan was in the hospital, he and I had gone everywhere together
and had become perfect friends. No one had ever looked at me more
knowingly. We played in the afternoon when I was supposed to be
preparing for my classes and did errands in the early evening as
long as the Spring light lasted. We were easy and generous with
one another. Though only one year old, he understood everything.
Why wasn't I
easy and generous now? Why hadn't I put my arm around my son and
admitted how inept I am with mechanical devices? I could have asked
him to help me figure out how to fix the toilet; we might have done
it together. I could have apologized for my bad feelings. I had
often seen others defuse tense situations in just this way and had
even done so myself at other times. Why had I been so quick to take
offense this time?
Never mind about
Matthew's clothes cluttering the landing. I was tripping over truths
about myself that lay strewn all around my memory. My thoughts and
words in the bathroom had been mean and petty. I had congratulated
myself for not yelling at Matthew, but hadn't my pious scorn and
silence put him down as ruthlessly as a slap in the face?
If only I had
responded differently to him, he would have responded differently
to me. I knew this.
The more I reflected
on my history with my son, the more those truths disturbed and disheartened
me. They reminded me how much lighter and finer and happier things
could be between us. They showed me how much of what I prized most
in life I had lost.
I could only
ask, How could I have fallen so far? Why had I made myself so unhappy?
I could not
answer these questions. I only knew that somehow, as I had gained
in life experience, I had declined in sensitivity and wisdom. If
the episode in the bathroom was any indication, I had grown temperamental
and petty. Getting older had made me less mature. I had actually
believed that if things were ever going to be right between Matthew
and me again, it was he who needed to change, not I. This wasn't
the truth; I was the one who had to change. Why would I, an apparently
intelligent and well-adjusted man, mistreat the boy I loved and
make myself unhappy in the process? How could the life I had shared
with this boy have lost its sweetness?
Memories of
the experiences that had imparted that sweetness made the exchange
with Matthew all the more grim by comparison. I was capable of so
much better. The more I thought about my better possibilities, the
more sorrowful I became. I had failed to be the person I knew myself
capable of being-the person I am when I feel most whole and alive
and in harmony with myself.
Nothing in my
experience has been a greater source of sadness than this discrepancy,
this distance, between the person I am when I am true to what I
know to be right and the person I become when I am not.
Troubled
Feelings-the Universal Affliction
We have all had experiences like mine with Matthew. We
have felt hurt or provoked or upset by the people around us-angry,
for instance. Or resentful. Or envious. Or intimidated. Or fearful.
Or humiliated. Or disgusted by something done to us. We feel helpless
to rid ourselves of these feelings.
We don't rid
ourselves of this sense of helplessness by trying to ignore the
supposed offenses of others or attempting to distract ourselves
from our feelings. The unfairness, indifference, disrespect, rudeness,
or cruelty troubles us through and through-sometimes only faintly
but always unmistakably. The pain, which is real, seeps into and
taints every sector of life. Unclouded happiness seems impossible.
Everyone who
has ever been stuck in such troubled thoughts and feelings knows
how they make a shambles of our inner lives. A "gas law" of emotional
disturbance operates here, which might be formulated as follows:
"Any inner space, no matter how large, will be filled by any agitation,
no matter how small." The feelings that we blame on others, and
that seem to ruin everything, rudely refuse to be evicted once they
take up residence in us. Even though we retreat to the bedroom and
lock the door, figuratively speaking, we sleep in terror, knowing
those feelings are somewhere wandering about in the house. Families
who live on strained terms discover that their impatience and frustration
contaminate every project they undertake, whatever the setting-
cooking in the kitchen, repairing something in the workshop, reading
in the bedroom, even trying to play a game together. It is difficult
to overestimate the corrosive power of agitated feelings.
A Few
Examples
I cannot help thinking of individuals I know who have struggled
under the oppressive weight of some negative, troubled emotion or
attitude. Their problems range from everyday unhappiness to what
clinicians would call pathologies. No doubt you can also think of
people you know-or of yourself. Keep in mind that this condition
is as common as breathing air. Each of us, to one degree or another,
deals with troubled thoughts and feelings.
A homeowner
constantly critical of everyone in the neighborhood;
A schoolgirl
envious of her more popular classmates;
An office worker
who gets passed over for promotion because she's constantly down
on herself;
A family member
who refuses to do his part of the household chores and complains
against those who press him to help;
A teacher who
belittles his students if they don't answer his questions to his
satisfaction;
A woman who
nags her husband;
A businessman
preoccupied with his appearance and possessions and overanxious
to impress.
When such ordinary
people are described in a little more detail we can see that some
of them live with considerable frustration, disappointment, or pain.
I recall Mandy,
for example. Her father, a construction supervisor, had died of
a stroke when she was fourteen. When she was a little girl, he had
always worked long hours, often on jobs far away. He took Mandy's
older brother, Jeddy, with him on school holidays. Her mother encouraged
it because "the boy needs his father's influence." When little Mandy
asked to go, her father would say, "Not a good place for girls."
In the summer he would get away overnight for hunting or fishing,
sometimes with a friend and usually with her brother. But he'd say
to Mandy, "You're too little," or "I need Jeddy to clean the fish."
About the time Mandy turned ten her little sister, Nessie, was born,
and her father was promoted and didn't have to leave the house so
early or work so late. He would throw Nessie in the air and crawl
around with her and kiss her good night; when Mandy tried to kiss
him, he said, "You're too old for that." As she grew in years she
would feel "down" for long periods, and at those times especially
it would take very little to make her feel rejected. If someone
didn't give her full attention, she would try to get out of the
situation as quickly as she could. At those times, she said, her
resentment over being rejected would glow in her like hot coals.
She would often brood about what her father had done to her.
******
Another person
I think about is Norm, a successful business owner with great drive
and energy. He controlled his costs and his people with equal impatience.
It did not surprise me to learn that his inner life was blighted
by troubled relationships with his chief lieutenants. Despite his
power, Norm could not find a way to make his employees more committed
and cooperative, and he carried his aggravation home from the office
every night. "I haven't really been with my wife for nearly a year,"
he told me. "When we go to bed she reads and I just lie there and
stare at the ceiling and relive my frustrations."
I got to know
Ruel not too long after he took a job in sales, thinking he might
be able to break out of a pattern of "bad luck" in trying to find
a job at which he could be successful. After receiving his training,
he didn't immediately get himself out the door to make sales calls.
Instead, he spent his days listening to motivational tapes-getting
prepared, he told himself, so that he could succeed when he did
go. On the surface he appeared cheerful enough, but as I got to
know him I discovered him to be preoccupied with wounded feelings
and discouraged thoughts-the customers would be unreceptive; the
manufacturer had done a poor job on the product and it would be
hard to sell; his own family and life circumstances had not prepared
him properly to get on in the world successfully.
******
Victoria had
reared her two now-teenage children in an authoritarian and controlling
spirit. They had become touchy and belligerent-so much so, she said,
that "they wouldn't listen to me on anything. I couldn't control
them anymore. I had no idea where to start getting our household
into order-I didn't even know how to talk to them." She felt completely
stymied.
******
You get the
idea. I am not focusing on the emotional and attitudinal problems
of unusual people, different from the rest of us. I'm talking about
troubles that belong in some form and at some time to just about
all of us, the kind of troubles that we worry and talk about in
our families and with our confidants or that we're ashamed to admit
to anyone.
In
the next segment, we will see how we get "stuck" in negative emotions,
and how the way out may be an unexpected one…
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© 2001 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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