About a year ago, I was on a lunch cruise on the backwaters of Alleppey where I saw something that I remember to this day. It was the afternoon. We were in a post lunch haze and the kids were playing hide and seek. This boy decided that the space under the cloth covered table would be the perfect place to hide. He was looking elsewhere as he picked up the cloth and as he tried to enter, his forehead met with the steel legs of the table.
He cried and went to his father. What happened next is why I still think about the incident. The father gathered the boy in his arms, hugged him and let him cry. The father didn’t say he was a big boy and big boys didn’t cry. He didn’t tell the boy to hush. He didn’t even get up to hit the table legs that had the audacity to hurt his child – something I have seen many, many parents do.
He just held the boy, and let him cry. The boy stopped after a minute. He grinned, his father asked if he was okay. The boy nodded and the next moment he was not only back to playing but he was also telling the others to be careful of the steel table legs.
I don’t think I have ever seen someone just be present to someone else’s emotions like this. It had such a profound impact on me. Since that day, I have tried to mimic the father i.e. being present to whatever I am going through in that moment.
I have noticed this increasingly with myself that if I observe my emotions, stay present to everything I’m feeling without judgement, and let them live and die their natural death, I am in the best state of health. This is when I know I’m kicking ass at adulting. That perhaps an adult is not determined by age but how well they’re able to navigate the minefield of their own thoughts and emotions.
It is difficult, so bloody difficult, to do this though. I am extremely harsh on myself and even when I’m feeling justifiably angry and burnt out, I will take it out on myself by feeling like a failure. A failure who couldn’t manage her own self. It feels unforgivable at times for falling into the well-worn patterns of destructive behaviour.
I wrote 3 years back: we should stop calling them negative emotions. All emotions are essential and valid. It is only now that I am realizing how profound that thought is. We so often blame others for our state of mind. We want someone else to fix things so we can feel better. We conveniently forget our role in this drama. We forget that if someone else’s behaviour is troubling us, it is as much about us as it is about them.
It’s been an interesting exercise, trying to understand and forgive the patterns that I have uncovered in myself so far. I succeed some days and fail others. Some days I don’t want to try and some days I want to wallow. It can be so exhausting, keeping yourself safe when the world around is filled with triggers.
Most of the time, I manage to remind myself I am responsible for and taking care of me. It may feel romantic to wait for a knight or someone to sweep in and fix things, but unless I get my hands dirty, none of it is going to matter.
The beauty of remembering that I am the one I seek is, help always arrives when I need it or ask for it. Sometimes the help is in the form of people. Sometimes it’s in the form of ideas or inspiration. Sometimes it’s the universe telling me exasperatedly to have some patience.
Understanding what makes me tick has been akin to channeling my inner Sherlock Holmes, becoming a detective so I can get reacquainted with parts of myself I had left on the wayside. Reuniting with them is like reuniting with an old friend: dreamy but hard work.
What is a self-discovery you have made over the years?
This post is a part of ‘Mindful Pursuit Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under #EveryConversationMatters and Blogchatter Half Marathon 2024
Hello, I’m also running an initiative called Listen to your Heart Song where I’m sending out handwritten letters. You can read more about it here.
tales of Suchita 
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