A bunch of us were joking last week at Young Urban Zen about how much harder it is to practice all the things we’re trying to do (listening, being present, being compassionate) when we’re with family. With strangers or even with friends, we can be “zenny” all day long but with family, it’s like there’s a 20 minute time limit, and then we just give up and fall right back into our old patterns.
I guess this makes sense. If habits and emotional baggage are what distract us from seeing things as they are, there’s no place more distracting or filled with habits and baggage than our interactions with family. Don’t take that the wrong way, families are full of history and emotions and habits and that’s a great thing. It just occurred to me that the reason it can be so hard is because our families are where we spent most of our time developing these habits, these roles, these stories about how things should be. So it’s extra hard to step out of these roles when we’re with them. It’s like just being in the presence of the people who share these habits, who play the parts in the roles that make up our dynamic with others, we fall right back in line to what had been so familiar for so long. In some ways, for me, it can be really good to be around family when I have presence of mind. When I can step back and watch myself and my family dynamic, I can learn a lot about myself, see my own habits in the behaviors of my family. But often, without even thinking, I end up watching myself totally reacting the way I always have and not having the presence to step out of that interaction.
This weekend when I went home, I just went home. I didn’t really think about being present or compassionate, I just spent time with my family. And, like I said, I fell right back into my regular interactions. It wasn’t bad but I definitely watched myself not being present, asserting my own agenda, and interpreting things through my own stories. There were times when I caught myself, took a deep breath, and tried to listen better or to see my family for who they are. But those times didn’t last too long and I was surprised by how easily and naturally I fell right back into my role and reacted based on it rather than on what was actually happening.
At the end of the weekend, totally by fluke, I had an interaction with a family member where I actually was present. I was listening to a certain someone but also thinking about some website on the internet that wasn’t working. I turned my thoughts back to the certain someone and, I think because I had been distracted thinking about the internet, just listened to what they were saying, not how I could respond back. And I saw that this person was being kind of funny, that this person was making a really clever commentary about priorities in society based on the relative thickness of the sports section of the paper in relation to the business section. And I thought “Wow, you have a really sweet way of seeing things by looking at them from a totally different angle.” I won’t share what thoughts I would normally have had about this interaction- they’re not bad but they’re caught up in my concern for this person, my power dynamic with them, and my overall identification with them as their family member. But I’m sharing this because I had a positive interaction when I was (by mistake or not) present for the interaction. And I guess that motivates me to try to be present the next time I’m home, to make the extra effort around family, because for all the stuff they’ve given us, they’re really cool too, and they’re worth the extra deep breath or the effort it takes to just listen.
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