A novelist wrote in her book recently that the important things in a marriage are not the big events, but the little tensions.
Maria and I are soul mates, we see the world in the same way, but we have been together for a decade now, and we deal with the little tensions often.
There was one this week, and it is helping me better understand my life, and also me.
Some good friends of ours took a trip recently and Maria was telling me about it and she said she would take a trip like that.
I thought I replied that our friends took a trip I would not wish to take, it seemed uninteresting to me. She seemed annoyed with me, and I asked her why, and she said that she heard me saying something quite different: that it was a silly trip, and they were foolish for taking it.
I was surprised, and irritated. I didn’t recall saying anything like that. It was not how I felt.
She said that was what I was quite clearly implying, and she added that she thought at times I was judgmental and disapproving of people. She said that was quite at odds with her view of me as being open to new experience, which was something she loved about me.
She clearly didn’t love the judgmental part.
I started to protest, and defend myself, deny her interpretation. I felt myself getting annoyed and defensive. I told myself to stop. Be quiet, Jon.
One lesson I’ve learned in recent years is to consider criticism of me carefully. Initially at least, I believe every bad thing said about me is true. That way I will at least consider it. How else can I learn what I want to know? How else can I grow?
Before rushing to argue or defend myself, I try (sometimes I even succeed) to pause and assume, even for a moment that criticisms of me are true before I deny them or argue about them.
Just shut up, i tell myself and consider what you are being told. Rather than deny that I am judgmental or disapproving at times, it would be better, I thought, and more productive, if I instead considered why this might be so and what I can do about it.
Every time I watch the news, I am reminded of my belief that arguing has never solved any problem I know of in the world or in my life.
So I said nothing and thought about it.
I am beginning to get older, and I have noticed that I am sometimes impatient, and sometimes frustrated by the things I can’t do any longer, by clerks in stores rushing to open doors and help me carry bags out to the car. I resent the number of pills i take for my heart and diabetes, and the inevitable side effects they cause.
Maria is 17 years younger than I am, and that sometimes matters. I have many more years behind me than ahead of me, and getting older is not something younger people can always understand. And how could they? They are not old.
Given my own upbringing, I learned to be wary and judgmental reflexively, it was what I saw around me the whole time I was growing up.
I read through some literature about Dyslexia online, some from the doctor who first diagnosed me, and I reminded of how much trouble I had with issues related to spelling, frustration in classrooms, responding to information quickly, organizing thoughts, flexible thinking and working memory.
Dyslexics often have trouble translating their emotions into the words and sentences that most people use. It is quite possible that I might have one thought and expressed it in ways that sound quite different to other people, event those who know me as well as Maria. When I first met Maria she said she always saw through my troubles and into the inner soul. The real me.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t sound judgmental or disapproving or rigid to her.
Sometimes my words sound harsher and sharper than my heart. That could be related to Dyslexia or to my own history of emotional turbulence, I was often angry and frightened, and both of things can often be connected. This confusion about thinking and language can make one seem judgmental or sound judgmental.
I was intrigued at this disconnect with Maria, a person with whom I rarely disconnect. And I was also thinking back on many of the conflicts I have had which surprise me, people getting upset with me over things I did not understand or intend.
Honestly, my friend’s trip did not bother me at all, nor did the fact they took it. I am very fond of them and believe quite strongly that they should take any trips they wish anytime they want, just like I would do myself.
I think what I thought I was saying was that I hoped they had a good time, but it was not a trip I would wish to take. It seemed dull and boring to me. Is that judgmental? It could sure sound that way, it doesn’t sound that way to me.
Since Maria is so honest and forthright, I fully accept that I said it in the way that she heard it, and this was something I could handle if I paid attention to it.
Something I want to take responsibility for. I don’t wish to hide behind Dyslexia or my raggedy childhood, but Dyslexics often have trouble communicating precisely what I mean. In my writing, I think I do a good job of that, but I do stumble at times.
The answer for me, as always, is to take full responsibility for my life. I recently read an interview with TV and movie star Jennifer Aniston, sho was diagnosed with Dyslexia in her 20’s. “I felt like all my childhood trauma-dies, tragedies, dramas were explained,” she told a reporter.
Me too I was diagnosed in my 60s – but explaining them doesn’t mean they are forgiven or miraculously disappear.
I have to work hard, perhaps harder than some people, to see myself as my truthful friends and family sees me. As long as I remind blind or unaware of my own truth, I will feel badly about myself, and puzzled about other people’s concerns for me.
I will, the shrinks warn, keep putting myself down and seeing everyone else as better, holier, and more loved than I am. The Dyslexic, like the abused or troubled child – I have to say I am all three – will look up to everyone in whom they see goodness, beauty and love because they do not see these qualities in themselves.
That is a toxic formula for judgment and resentment, it causes me to turn to others for things I need to learn and do for myself. That has been my work of recent years. A therapist told me that many people have more severe problems than I do, but no one worked harder at dealing with them. I was proud of that.
I can’t force this kind of truth or self-awareness or declare myself miraculously healed. I cannot force myself to see what others see in me. I can only do the hard work of self-awareness.
What can I do?
Work very hard to see myself truthfully, acknowledge the worst parts of me, affirm who I am and who I wish to be. And yes, for all that, I must always be willing to live my loneliness, my brokenness, my incompleteness, fearlessly and without equivocation.
I am learning to trust that God, or whatever passes for God in me, will continue to bring me the people who will not be afraid to show me the truth about who I am. That is how we heal.
Audio: The Truth About Who I Am
