Alchemization

“If you listen closely, when people give advice they’re actually talking to younger versions of themselves.” – Dr. Nicole LaPerla

One of my horoscopes today talked about using this month to turn “wounds into wisdom.” I think that this is what aging is all about. I believe that life is a constant cycle and process of turning wounds into wisdom. Sometimes we don’t reflect enough, or we aren’t honest enough with ourselves to do true introspection, and thus we just keep tearing apart at our wounds, making them bleed more and not allowing for the healing process. But we eventually, usually get it. And when we do “get it”, we are sad that our younger selves didn’t quite “get it” in what we deem to be a timely manner, so we at least try to save others, by spouting off advice.

It can be off-putting to get advice, especially unsolicited advice. Bernard Williams calls unsolicited advice, “the junk mail of life.”

Wise people advice from experience. Wiser people, from experience, do not advice.” – Amit Kalantri

That’s the thing, we get most of our deepest wisdoms from our experiences. And so we desperately try to save others from having similar tough experiences that we’ve had, yet it is those very experiences which gave us our own deepest, best wisdom. What a Catch-22!

I’m guilty of spouting off too much advice, and I do it all of the time. I do it to my kids, my husband, my friends, my pets (“Trip don’t provoke Ralphie, you know where this leads . . . .), strangers I meet on the street. Hell, I do it here on the blog all of the time. Please forgive me. It doesn’t come from my wisest self. My advice comes from my desire to “save (“control”) the world.” (or if I am honest, like Nicole LaPerla says, my advice is my desire to prove to my younger self that I’ve learned and I’ve grown. Perhaps trying to save others from my own mistakes, is a gift that I am trying to give to my own younger self for putting her through a lot of tough experiences, that often took a long, long while to alchemize into wisdom.)

Mantra for the day: Self, I forgive you. Self, I appreciate you. Self, your experiences were worth the gold of your wisdom. Self, let go and trust this process of turning experience into wisdom, for your own self going forward, and for all whom you love.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Healing

“Nobody tells you this but sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound.” – Think Smarter, Twitter

Think Smarter nailed it once again. I remember when I gave birth to my first child. He was nine pounds, which a baby that size was much less common, over twenty years ago. Of course, going into labor and giving birth to my son was quite painful, but no one prepared me for the fact that I would feel like I had been hit by a Mack truck, for a good long while afterwards. Pushing my robust baby out of me, ended up spraining my tail bone and I had to sit on a rubber doughnut for weeks. Of course, my son is worth it. I’m not complaining. He is one of the greatest joys and loves of my life. Still, when I saw the quote mentioned above, this is one of the many instances, in my life, that came to my mind, to validate it. Before my first son was born, I read a million books on childbirth, listened to a litany of frightening childbirth stories, (which any woman who has ever given birth to a baby herself, and notices a young, pregnant woman, feels a compulsion to share every gory detail), and of course, I took the requisite neighborhood Lamaze classes. Everyone focused on giving birth to the baby. All of the advice was geared towards the birth episode, which typically lasts less than one day. Not once, not ever, did I feel warned about how physically terrible I would feel after the birth, and I didn’t even have a cesarean delivery.

We’ve been wounded here with the coronavirus, folks, in a big way. The initial gash of realizing that people were dying at an alarming rate from a disease for which we have no cure for, nor protection from, and then having to quarantine for weeks on end, and all of this happening, in a time span that felt nothing short of sudden, was shocking, alarming and intense, to say the least. The initial wound of realization was overwhelming and numbing. The initial injury hit us like a sledgehammer. It still seems utterly surreal. Still, we are going to heal from this coronavirus situation. We know this. We have already started to slowly open things up, to air the wound out, and we are trying to scab over this horrible situation, a little bit, in any way that we can. We have the smartest people in the world, working 24/7 to find solutions to cure the coronavirus and all of the damaging side effects and complications, that has come with it. We are all in a state of mourning for our losses, with some of us having paid the worst price of all, but still, we shall heal. It’s just that the healing is not going to be quick and easy and painless. No real healing ever is, from any kind of major trauma. The healing from any wound or trauma, is often the hardest part.

Today, I read on the internet, a quote that said, “Enjoy the space between where you are and where you are going.” Life is mostly made of those in-between spaces. And I don’t think that we were meant to waste the in-between spaces, by wishing them away. The vast amount of healing and growth and life, happens in those in-between spaces. We just don’t notice what happens in the in-between spaces, as much, because they are not nearly as jarring and life-stopping, as the unforeseen traumas and dramas, that stop us in our tracks. The in-between spaces are lulling and less interesting than the joyous, raucous conclusions and celebrations. But what do we celebrate on graduations? We celebrate the hard work of years and years of wisdom gathering and knowledge building and a child evolving into an adult. We celebrate the in-between space, starting with the first day of kindergarten, to the last day of high school, for a senior. There’s a lot of life that happened in that in-between space. And also, a lot of experience and growth that occurred in that span of many, many years, in-between. Every birthday is really a celebration of the in-between space between birthdays. Birthdays celebrate the life that happened in the in-between space, in the time period of one year. The in-between spaces are so very important. We need to be patient and grateful for the spaces. Right now we are in an in-between space that started with a horrible virus infiltrating the world and it will end with a calming, healing conclusion. We know this. Right now our job is to live as healthfully and peacefully and patiently as we can, in this in-between space. Little do we realize, that we are currently growing, exponentially, as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations, as the world, so that when we finally get to the healing conclusion, we will have globally transformed into a wiser, stronger, more compassionate, more clear version of what we were before. That’s what healing does. Healing is not easy. But a true healing, while inevitably leaving a scar, brings about such an authentic transformation in us, that sometimes we find ourselves perhaps even a tad grateful for the initial, sharp, deep pain, that brought us around to the in-between space, which helped us to heal into our most whole, our most authentic, our most enlightened versions of ourselves .