Irritated? What next: Blame or Connect?
You cannot be blaming someone else and be in connection at the same time. If you are familiar with Brene Brown’s work this is not new to you. (May I recommend her short on Blame? https://youtu.be/RZWf2_2L2v8?si=c1rzkjcDIZqgk6H6)
And here is how it was played out for me this week. My doctor cancels and reschedules an appointment. Some days I can roll with this, but today I am irritated. My first instinct is to delve into the sticky. What does canceling an appointment say about the other person? In this mood, it is nothing flattering. I also can hear a voice that acknowledges these observations aren’t helping me feel better. But there is something tantelizing about pulling and tugging the story into shape like I’m a machine working salt water taffy.
A better question is, “Why am I irritated?”
I feel like I’ve done something wrong, and this “wrong” changes my value. I could have known. I shouldn’t have scheduled on a Friday. I shouldn’t have done it so far in advance. To discharge the discomfort of all my stories, so much easier to blame.
So… take my value and worth out of the equation. Walking it out, on my lunch break, the owner/ waitress initiates a hug because I haven’t been in for a while. Connection. Back on the sidewalk, these words come to me. “There is no other.”
Before I blame the other for being irritating, realize a bigger truth. In the experience of connection there is no other. If I am in blame, I am no longer in connection. That is too high a price to pay. The fact that an appointment has been canceled is, but the story I’m telling about it can set sail. (Buddhism calls the second arrow the ways we increase our suffering after the initial disappointment occurs.)
Acutely aware of the feeling of blame and the stories that satisfy and validate the claim, AND the feeling of connection with the waitress. I realize both feelings are in me, and I can choose connection. In a literal way, “there is no other”, I shape my experience. And also true, when you are in connection, you are not aware of otherness. Imagine you are in awe, standing beside an immense ocean or mountain. You are over whlemed by feeling and in that moment the mountain is not separate. It is and you are, and you are being together without experiencing the boundaries that usually separate us. It can be the same experience with people.