Patriarchy – You Are Wonderful

Patriarchy isn’t a word we hear much these days. But many of us grew up with the effects of it. Men and especially fathers were ‘given’ authority that they did not necessarily possess; ‘given’ authority, rather than ‘inner’ authority. Along with ‘authority’ they were given the right to control, bully and abuse – because bullying is abusive.

If you grew up in a patriarchal family and a patriarchal society, you were probably never told how wonderful you are. This is so important, because we are all wonderful. It’s important to know that and to see the wonder in everybody else, each person you know and meet.

If you relate with what is wonderful in yourself and others, your world becomes not only a wonderful place, but also a safer place. When you relate with wonder, you live with wonder, which is fresh and new and ‘awesome’ every day.

If you were put down by so-called authority, controlled and bullied, you will live with fear. You need to remember just how wonderful you are in order to combat this fear and to create a reality that is based on your inner being, your belief in yourself, as well as that of others, which is, indeed, good and wonderful. You will then have a lot more peace in your world and there will be peace in the world at large.

Remember, it is patriarchy that creates wars and always has done. It is the fear it has engendered that makes us frightened today. If we have peace in our selves, if we have that sense of wonder, we will not want to go to war with each other. We will not want to spoil and destroy it – we will not be fighting with ourselves.

Loneliness and Abandonment

Loneliness and abandonment are not the same. Abandonment implies helplessness and even annihilation. An abandoned child will eventually die if they are not rescued, so will an adult who is abandoned, perhaps, in a desert or on a deserted island. But a child can ‘cease to be’ if it feels emotionally abandoned, even if its physical needs are met. This child grows up searching for itself, often in others (see Codependency), or holding other people at bay because he/she doesn’t know who they are and fears losing an already weak identity; fears being taken over or overwhelmed by someone else’s.

It’s natural to be lonely if you don’t have enough social interaction. After all, we are social beings. It’s possible to spend long periods in solitude, especially if you have a need to do this. If you are strong enough emotionally, if you have a strong enough sense of self, you can enjoy this experience. But, for most of us in ‘normal’ or ‘general’ circumstances, we do need other people; we need relationships.

Although periods of solitude can be highly creative, and may even be necessary for creativity, loneliness can be debilitating and restrict your creativity. Loneliness isn’t something to be feared, but maybe to be remedied. This is within your power. It is the fear of abandonment, coming from your childhood experience, which makes you feel powerless. This fear can make you cling to unsuitable relationships that restrict your creativity because they drain, or at least, demand your energy. Or you can attempt to control the fear by withdrawing and withholding from relationships. This ultimately makes you lonelier – as does does the compulsive and addictive behaviours you may adopt to kill the pain of legitimate loneliness.

If you can balance the fear you still carry from childhood abandonment with the very genuine need for human interaction in the present, you will be able to let go of your addictive, and destructive, behaviours. The paradox is, if you let go of these behaviours, even though you create a vacuum for a short while, you will love yourself more and therefore attract the relationships you crave – as well as feeling less lonely because you are enjoying your own company. If you forgive your childhood abandonment, you will no longer be raging against it, retaliating with destructive behaviours towards yourself and be able to move out of you adult loneliness into fulfilling relationships.

To an English Friend in Africa by Ben Okri

This has such insight:

To an English Friend in Africa

Be grateful for freedom
To see other dreams.
Bless your loneliness as much as you drank
Of your former companionships.
All that you are experiencing now
Will become moods of future joys
So bless it all.
Do not think your ways superior
To another's
Do not venture to judge
But see things with fresh and open eyes
Do not condemn
But praise what you can
And when you can't be silent.

Time is now a gift for you
A gift of freedom
To think and remember and understand
The ever perplexing past
And to re-create yourself anew
In order to transform time.

Live while you are alive.
Learn the ways of silence and wisdom
Learn to act, learn a new speech
Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit
Learn to free yourself from all things that have moulded you
And which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Remember that all things which happen
To you are raw materials
Endlessly fertile

Endlessly yielding of thoughts that could change
Your life and go on doing for ever.

Never forget to pray and be thankful
For all the things good or bad on the rich road;
For everything is changeable
So long as you live while you are alive.

Fear not, but be full of light and love;
Fear not but be alert and receptive;
Fear not but act decisively when you should;
Fear not, but know when to stop;
Fear not for you are loved by me;
Fear not, for death is not the real terror,
But life -magically - is.

Be joyful in your silence
Be strong in your patience
Do not try to wrestle with the universe
But be sometimes like water or air
Sometimes like fire

Live slowly, think slowly, for time is a mystery.
Never forget that love
Requires that you be
The greatest person you are capable of being,
Self-generating and strong and gentle-
Your own hero and star.

Love demands the best in us
To always and in time overcome the worst
And lowest in our souls.
Love the world wisely.

It is love alone that is the greatest weapon
And the deepest and hardest secret.

So fear not, my friend.
The darkness is gentler than you think.
Be grateful for the manifold
Dreams of creation
And the many ways of unnumbered peoples.

Be grateful for life as you live it.
And may a wonderful light
Always guide you on the unfolding road.

March 1991

The Magical Child

I had a magical experience on Sunday night. My two companions saw the magic in me. They saw me smile and cheered for me, told me I looked beautiful. My bitter friend rejected me when I tried to share my experience with her, like a grumpy parent rejecting an excited and enthusiastic child. I’m sure that was done to her as a child, as it was to me. The result is to compromise in trying to be accepted and lose your magic in the process. You become what you think you are wanted to be and not who you are.

My image for this is a child presenting a dandelion to their mother as a beautiful flower and being brushed away and told, ‘It’s only a wee-the-bed.’ How easily you can get discouraged by someone else’s jaundiced view, especially if they are someone you want to accept and love you. How easily you lose the magic in your heart. How easily you devalue magical experiences, debase them and turn them into something gross and mundane. How easily you deny the worth of your reality.

But, to meet a fellow traveller, (if you believe you are on a path), and share one insight, or more, for a moment, an hour, or maybe longer – it doesn’t matter how short or how long – is pure magic. This is the stuff that healthy relationship is made of.

When we are honest with one another, when we meet with open hearts to share our truths and receive each other, listen, take each other in, that’s when the magic happens because we are nurturing the magic, the divinity in each other. How many of you can claim you had that nurtured in you as a child? Some children do.

Appropriateness and Cross Gender Fertilisation

I met a man on Sunday who opened his heart to me. He was the most real person I have heard for a long time, speaking his truth with passion. I just know my pot/kettle friend would have attacked him. I stood up and cheered for him. I don’t think his truth gets heard very often.

If you’ve not been listened to as children, you often share inappropriately. It’s been said that adult children of dysfunctional families tell their life story to the lady at the supermarket checkout but keep their truth secret from their friends. They haven’t learned appropriateness.

My friend (new friend) on Sunday knew he was safe with me and another mutual friend present. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything he said. But I listened and thought about it – for half the night, actually. He gave me plenty of food for thought. It’s good to hear another point of view, especially a man’s, if you’re a woman, even if it does challenge you. I believe women with women can collude with one another in gender based biases. Maybe men do that too. There’s something refreshing and fertilising about cross gender conversations and revelations, not to mention surprising.

We used to use an exercise in groups called the Fish Bowl. The men would sit in a tight circle and the women would sit close behind them in another circle. The men were given various subjects to discuss, relating to relationships with women. The women were not allowed to comment. Then they changed places for their discussions. At the end there would be sharing. Both genders were surprised and pleased by what they heard.

The Pot, The Kettle And Denial

This morning a friend rang, in a hurry as usual. She wanted to go to the cinema. It calms her. I said it wasn’t open and that I’d been trying to ring her, to share something important, insights into a common problem we have that I’d got from another person. She didn’t want to talk about that and I didn’t get a chance to ask about her weekend. She hung up, leaving me feeling breathless. Not long after, I got an email from her attacking me and telling me I talk ninety percent about me, don’t have listening skills and don’t ask questions about her.

My reply: ‘I think this is a case of pot and kettle.’

It’s my own fault. I left myself open. I tried to share something that’s painful to her. Well, it’s a shared problem. It’s painful for me too. Maybe it comes to ladies of a certain age -:) But I was grateful to the man who opened his heart to me on Sunday and shared his insights, however painful and challenging they were for me to listen to and look at – some bits of myself I’d rather not deal with; but I’m willing to. He reminded me about a few things I’d forgotten about relationships. I tend to rise to challenges. My friend didn’t want to. She prefers to blame other people, circumstances, and go to the cinema to escape her pain instead. But that’s after she delivered a dose of it to me by attacking me.

OK, I shared something important with someone I now know it’s not safe to share with. (I’ll write about appropriateness). I won’t be doing that again. For me, if it’s not possible to share with a friend, then there is no friendship. If a friend says, ‘I don’t want to go there,’ I respect that, and friends do at times. But if they attack or blame or accuse me, that’s not on, especially when they’re accusing me of exactly what they’re doing – in this case not listening. And, if you don’t listen to yourself, how can you listen to others. If you don’t admit you’re in pain, avoid it by running away (to the pictures, or the beach, or wherever), you will hurt others.

Pot and kettle: as it happens, she did me a favour. She enabled me to see where I am hurting myself – certainly by giving my power away, and then becoming a victim of someone else’s pain. The only problem is, I won’t be able to discuss this with her now. Her next email said, let’s move on. She was obviously not open for further discussion. But we can’t move on, because it will happen again, and I’m not up for that. That’s the sad part. If you deny your pain, you’re likely to push other people away from you. Your defences will stop them approaching. You deny yourself intimacy. That’s what the man on Sunday taught me.

Community

I’m no prophet, but I’ve been saying for years that the only way we’re going to survive things like the recession, global warming, diminishing resources and other unavoidable changes is through sharing resources and facilities by coming together in communities. This means co-operating and caring; looking out for one another, not just for number one. It also means facing the challenges of forming functional relationships.

That’s not so easy. It means learning to get along with one another. It also means finding like-minded people to ‘commune’ with. Not easy if you don’t first know your own mind. You need to be an individual in your own right before you can be ‘part of’ a community. That means moving from dependence to independence so you can interdepend. It also means letting go of your pseudo-independent position, where you appear not to need anybody. We do need each other, and that’s why we need communities.

You need clear personal boundaries before you can safely enter community. And you need your heart open so you can be honest and allow intimacy, when it’s appropriate. In any group of people it won’t necessarily be appropriate to be intimate with everybody. You will need discrimination and discernment in order to choose. The more necessary it becomes for us to build and live in communities, the more we will have to grow up.

Joy and Sorrow

In my heart, where I find that bit of what I understand as God in me, my divinity, I find both joy and sorrow. I wonder if that’s what God is. I wonder if joy and sorrow always go together.

My mother used to say she didn’t believe there could be a God because, if there was, he wouldn’t let people suffer and there would be no death; a bit simplistic and naïve. But life isn’t simple – it’s complex. Maybe God doesn’t let us suffer – we do.

In my book, The Joy of Growing Up, I talk about learning to accept disappointments as part of the process of growing up. Maybe, as we move out of childhood fantasy, where everything is idealised and perfect, into accepting reality and into adulthood, we also learn to accept sorrow. We gain and we lose. That’s the cycle of life.

What’s important is not to let sorrow overwhelm joy. As you accept it, you also let it go. If you try to deny it, it will stay with you.