In Our Own Little Head

 

This morning, I typed the phrase, “in our own little head” into Google search.

This is the definition that came up:

“To be in your head usually means overthinking or overanalyzing a situation or behavior, constantly dwelling on the same thing over and over until your mind feels super cluttered. Sometimes, we all get stuck in our heads, but some of us do so more than others.”

I have been considering how being in “our own little head” relates to patience, and based on the above definition, while some might see great patience in spending oodles of time going over the same thought or situation, I see it as being an act of impatience if open-minded resolution or closure is not the motivation. 

That’s because impatience fails to do the patient act of objectively measuring our own role in the interactions with other people and organizations, and instead places everyone involved, including ourselves, within our own one-sided, self-centered and self-important perspective.

This results in quickly jumping to, and emotionally enlarging upon, if not unfair and warped conclusions, then certainly self-defeating and unproductive ones. 

Patience, on the other hand, takes the deep breath of setting aside one’s sensitive and insecure emotional state so as to thoughtfully and bravely consider true context, which can take time, requiring skills and maturity that develop in the course of months and years.

If that groundwork has not been laid, then of course we will be inept with, and perhaps entirely ignorant of, calm, measured responses and perceptions. 

After all, positive behaviors become habits the same way that bad behaviors do, and can become our default mode in the same way; the difference being productive outcomes.

When getting outside of our head is the norm, we can build healthy inner personal and outer interpersonal dialogues founded upon the reality of what actually took place and do so unthreatened by multiple viewpoints. 

Instant reaction is thus replaced by a slower right intake and careful recollection of all of the facts. 

David Baily Harned, in his book, Patience: How We Wait Upon the World, writes that patience is a “profoundly important defense against the distractions of dejection and sorrow and the frustrations that seem to have no end in sight.”

I love that concept of impatience leading to distractions: the stealing of our minds and hearts from what is good, right, lovely, pure and going well in our lives via the tunnel-vision of self.

“Through a forbearance that has no thought of punishment or revenge, those who are patient neither permit an injury to become an obsession even more painful than the original hurt, nor do they retaliate, which would cancel out the difference between themselves and those who harm them," Harned writes.”

Ultimately, I find the phrase “in our own little head” to be quite telling in the use of the word “little,” as little heads only have room for one person, and thus will be frequently impatient with everyone, and everything, else.

Copyright Barb Harwood

Our Perception of the Act of Waiting

 

David Baily Harned continues his dialogue on patience by exploring assumptions related to it, the first being how we perceive, and thus value or devalue, the act of waiting:

In the past, Baily posits, waiting was a virtue of strength, not weakness:

"How else can we allow the future to emerge? The patience that waiting entailed was a great human act because it summoned the most distinctive powers of the self to their finest expression--vision and imagination, faith and hope, courage and prudence, humility and love.

"Today waiting remains no less a part of our lives than it ever was for our ancestors. But our assumptions about human nature and fulfillment have changed, and therefore our attitude toward waiting has changed as well. We see it less often as an opportunity, more often as a diminishing of the quality of our lives, a deprivation enforced upon us by an unfriendly environment. If reality can be more or less equated with everything we can manipulate and control, then does not the need to wait suggest a failure in ourselves? We have not yet found our place in the sun, nor achieved the mastery of our surroundings. Far from being one of the great human acts, waiting simply testifies that we have not won our struggle with the world. It tells us less about our strength than our weakness and lack of invention."

Harned says the result of this negative view of waiting is that we arrive at the conclusion that

"...waiting means there are voids in our universe, holes and tatters in what is intended to be the seamless fabric of our activity, and so we must do something with these empty spaces. They must be filled. If they are not, we shall become anxious or bored, which is the matrix for all sorts of destructive behavior toward others and toward oneself. If waiting is pointless, where can it end except in boredom unless it is relieved? The name of such relief is busyness...

"Busyness is important for two reasons. First, it is a distraction, diverting our attention from the need to wait, and so it contributes mightily to our self-esteem in a world where human significance is equated with doing things...

"The second reason is the role of busyness in expressing an impulse deeply written into our culture: the desire to believe that, no matter what, everything is all right. Busyness allows us to forget that the ordinary course of human affairs involves the sapping of our energy, our growing dependence upon the kindness of others, the inevitability of waiting, and yielding to forces far stronger than our own. In the end, what keeping busy means is quite simply the refusal...to look reality in the face. But this is also to turn from God, who is the ultimate reality..."      David Baily Harned, in Patience: How We Wait Upon the World

The Unpopularity of Patience in Our Time

David Baily Harned, in his book, Patience: How We Wait Upon the World, notes that

"patience seems to have lost its power to reconcile and heal and comfort. In its truncated and withered form the virtue has been isolated from both theology and common experience--not to mention common sense."

Patience, Succinctly Defined

The following definition of the word "patience" comes from the book, Patience: How We Wait Upon the World by David Baily Harned:

"A person's triumph over all the diversions and afflictions that can test our powers of endurance, forbearance, and discipline."

Moving on in Forgiveness as an Attitude

 

We hear and talk so much about forgiveness. 

The actuality of arriving at that place, however, is so unique to each one of us due to the specific attributes of each person and situation that it is often tough to define. 

The only way to really forgive, is to just begin to want to, and then to actively do so, in all sobering thought that considers our role too, whatever that may look like from the perspective of naiveté, family culture, personal meekness, being bullied or made fun of, and our own hurtful acted-out animosities.

But once we have done the work—and by that I mean with God’s leadership so as to maintain a semblance of objectivity instead of a closed-minded path of “woe is me"—then we move on. 

And by that, I mean we at some point close the door on the past, and let the new owners move in. 

And those new owners are this: our transformed attitude and resulting confidence that the sincerely desired and honestly attained forgiveness can now be lived out.

We can thrive in this hard-won forgiveness by accepting and allowing those we have forgiven to be who they are, and the past be what it was (meaning we can’t change it, so don’t forgive and then attempt to change things going forward). 

Again, this assumes we have actually done the mental assent of forgiveness through logically and objectively examining ourselves, others and the past under the microscope of God’s guidance and revelation.

This forgiveness does not need to condone anything or anyone, and it does not give permission to the past or the persons we have forgiven to continue to impact or touch us. 

Instead, in a forgiving, accepting manner, we have no part in the people or places we have confidently put behind us via forgiveness (for family members or co-workers with whom we must continue to be around, we separate ourselves with appropriate emotional and mental boundaries, and keep a cordial physical distance between us, bowing to no pressure whatsoever to reveal personal details or to “join in” and place ourselves in their control). 

We meet our own expectations for our own behavior, not other people's expectations. And we drop our expectations for others to be what they clearly are not and have no intention, at this time, of being.

Neutral impartiality is our new normal with those we have forgiven when we must be in their presence.

We simply live and let live, in a fresh paradigm of healthy guardrails, under no illusions that any continued attempts on our part to change another person or situation will solve anything.

If the person we have forgiven chooses, at some future point in time, to mature, that is up to them. 

If they desire a sincere reconciliation and exhibit a contrite heart of apology—we decide whether their motivations are honest and humble, or mere manipulation to pull us back in to assuage their insecurities. 

As The Who song goes, “don’t be fooled again.”

A forgiving state of mind establishes us in steadfast wisdom and strength of unwavering integrity and self-respect.

We focus on, invest in and come alive with the joy of appreciation for those with whom we do remain grounded in reciprocal, authentic love and compatibility, all the while at peace with those we have taken deliberate steps to contextually understand and thus, forgive.

Copyright Barb Harwood

The Insidious Creep of Complaint

 

Habitual complaint derives from lack of gratefulness--that deep-seated, top-of-mind appreciation for what we do have materially, in health, and in relationships. 

A state of habitual complaint derives from a perspective or motive of concern, worry, resentment, hurt, anger, disappointment or self-imposed inadequacy, and thrives because it makes our vulnerability less scary.

In complaint, we feel control--but it is a chimera.

And while we strut in the false esteem of criticisms, hoping to be something, we miss the sound foundation and peace of what is genuinely good, joyfully true and miraculously right with our world, and the world at large. All of which, ironically, check vulnerability's fear with a serene confidence and grounded hope. 

copyright Barb Harwood

Take This Day and Do Not Refuse It

Each new day begins a blank, and very clean, slate. 

Do we take it?

Do we stand in the face of morning and decide, desperately or calmly, as circumstances would have it, that within that virgin moment, we will own it and not merely let it slide with the residual momentum of all the days that preceded? 

Will we make today a different beginning, an alternative reality that can actually occur through our simple choosing?

A year from now, when 365 mornings have passed—365 individual moments of decision—will we reflect upon the metamorphosis from existence into a full experience of patient refusal to repeat the unthinkingly habitual?

Will we take that slant of light emanating from the east and declare each day for what we’ve often envisioned and hardly dared to hope for, in spite of everything (attitudinally and physically present in the necessary of the daily and professional but forgoing passive resignation, auto-pilot negativity and absent-minded time-fillers?)

We can take that day.

We can emerge from our sleepy beds, or places of nemesis of sleep, and just take it. 

Copyright Barb Harwood