There’s always someone who catches on first, takes the lead, makes the clever connections that lead to change. We admire those people, but there’s also something to admire about the ones who ripen more gradually, who hang in with something new as long as it takes for the idea to ripen.
What are you gradually figuring out?
Take-charge know-it-all’s might make the world go round, but quickly falls apart when empathy is required. Emptying out the intellect, the fix-it person within us who wants to save the day, messes up a hurting person’s need for empathy, for empathy takes hearing and hearing well like never before. No one’s pain is the same: what is new in the life of the hurting person is also new to the hearer. Sympathy may have a place, but only AFTER empathy is demonstrated. Yet we humans tend to jump right in with our so-called knowing, which causes more pain to the hurting person who has been taken hostage as the “fixer” takes over the story for a quick and tidy “happy” ending. It is better for hearers to begin empty and slowly fill up with caring as the moments unfold and teach both persons. Body nuances, like eye contact from one’s soul, shows much more caring than hastily-spoken words.
I’ve long wondered if I would marry. Now, I am beginning to realize what marriage would have meant for me and I’m not sure that I would or could have provided what a wife as an equal partner does. Commitments are for real and if they aren’t stuck to firmly, then there are often more affected than just one unhappy. unfulfilled person. I am counting up the things I have been able to do as a single person and find that the list is a long one! Perhaps I wasted a lot of time wondering and worrying why/why not. It still sits in my brain somewhere, however, what if….?