Life as a witness

I have been a member of a child intervention panel for some months now. Today, in our meetings we had an opportunity to interact directly with people who have been involved in child protection. This is not new territory for me as I have been working with people whose children have been apprehended by child protection workers for many years. Indeed, I have been a social worker since 1975. A long time!

Yet, the reality of what people survive continues to impact me. Today I heard amazing stories of trauma, survival, coping and resilience.  People whose childhoods were marked by abandonment, neglect, abuse, assault - and yet also survival, coping and recovery. These have been stories of the incredible pain that some inflict on others.  The bravery of coming to a complete stranger and telling of the trauma inflicted in childhood is amazing. I am in awe of the capacity of the people I met today to reach in and tell. I am honoured to have been trusted with the stories.

I am a witness.  This is needed. To tell a story of these magnitudes, the audience must be wiling to listen, otherwise there is only the pain of telling. Instead, what we offer is validation that says not only are you believed but also respected for being the human who survives.

There is no end to the pain that some inflict on others. Witnesses are essential. Giving space for the telling of truth matters. This is what we do as social workers. To be a witness requires that we also engage in self care. Meditation is such an opportunity. I cannot be a witness otherwise. When a women tells you of sexual assault; another speaks of alcohol as medication to take away the pain of neglect and abuse; when another speaks of a child lost and yet another talks about the broken self that exists after sexual assault. Witnesses must be strong in order to stand beside the survivors and give them true opportunity to know they speak their truth.

In meditation, I must find my truth. I must allow the pain of others to not be my pain while acknowledging that their truth exists and I am changed by it. I, like so many others, are drawn to social work because of our own painful journeys. Meditation is a place to know that pain within me while also seeing my recovery, resilience and fragility. I am a flawed self as also are the people I heard today. In meditation, there is space for both they and I.

To be known

I saw your eyes
the pain within
covered by the smile

You told me
of the abuse
As tears snuck out

Kleenex sought
Eyes diverted
The downward stare

We sat closely
I could hear the breath
Held to stop the crying

Loss spoken about
life once known
But now denied

It is within your cells
and mixed
the moment when we were both one

Walking away
My back turned
You will never leave me

Yet we will never again meet
Having left the intersection
But paths crossed

Your strength
and weakness cohabitants
Teaching me

© Peter Choate 2017

You are perfect!

If you are told that you are perfect the way you are, would you be like most people and identify a variety of reasons why that is not true? I certainly do! Yet, many Buddhist teachers explain that you are exactly what you are meant to be at any particular moment. Perfect - even with the supposed flaws. This just seems like a circular argument but wait - it's not. We are meant to have imperfections, flaws (e.g. humanness) and what is going on at any given moment is the way it is meant to be.

That is a very difficult position for most of us to take. This is really so given that our society is full of images, sayings and stories about the various imperfections that we carry around. How many of these can you identify with:

• not smart enough
• not tall enough
• not pretty enough
• don't have the six pack
• can't lift heavy weights
• don't have the right clothes
• don't have a good enough job
• my kids aren't achieving what other people's kids are
• my house isn't decorated, big, located in all the right ways
• I don't live in the right neighbourhood
• I didn't go to the right college

If you look inside what might you see?

These are all themes related to how wrong we are in some way and therefore not deserving of acceptance or recognition by others. Even worse, we are not deserving of acceptance by our own selves. To use a popular phrase, all of the above (and many more) are alternative facts. You really are who you are meant to be.

Does this mean we don't work for change. No. What it does mean is that you will never be perfect as an imperfect society describes that. You are who you are meant to be and that can be the biggest change you need to make - acceptance.

People who have the material goods, the six pack, the clothes - are not happier because of those things. They may well have way more ego as a result of defining success that way -  but that is not happiness.

Meditation is learning to see the self and coming to accept it.

This also does not mean that social action is unnecessary. To the contrary, social action is about the material realities of people who are being persecuted, tormented, beaten, isolated, started and so on. You might notice how much social action matters when you come to accept self and no longer need to boost your own ego or position through judgment of others.

This is hard work. It is easy to fall into the trap of self judgment and self denigration. Not only will you pay a price for this, but so will others whom you judge. Judgment is the action of the self onto others as a way of trying to minimize the impact of self judgment - feeling better at the expense of the other. Meditation is the antidote to permit knowing the self and coming to see you are perfect at the moment.

The other

I am fat

You are fatter

I am unhappy

You are miserable

I can't life 180

You can only lift 159

My car is old

Yours is older

I bought my shoes at The Bay

You must have bought yours second hand

No matter what my problem

Yours is worse

Why do I  not feel better?

Can I see the beauty in you

if the beauty in me is opaque?

© Peter Choate 2017

The Rage Within

For most of us, we don't think of rage as a typical part of our emotional repertoire. We might acknowledge giving the finger to a driver who has cut us off, uttering a nasty, sarcastic comment to someone who has been rude or muttering vicious words under our breath when offended. But outright rage - nope not us. Particularly not those of us who meditate - you know, us calm ones.

Yet rage is a true part of most of us. It finds its roots in childhood typically. This can be the result of harsh experiences such as abuse, maltreatment or neglect. It might find origins in rejection by peers or a failure on our own part to figure out the intricacies of social relationships. Premature death of a loved one or loss of a mentor or a pet can act as sources when we feel such grief to have been the result of injustice.

Others might find rage develop in adult life as a result of marital losses, job or career disappointments or economic upheaval.

Rage can develop when oppression has surrounded our life pathways. Individuals or groups who have been subject to racism, for example, have undergone systemic oppression that has touched the fabric of their existence. For them, justice has been consistently absent in their lives.

We have seen collective rage in the attacks of ISIS; the verbal brutality of recent election campaigns; of racist rants and notices posted upon places of worship. There has been a growth in legislative action that marginalizes women, poor, minorities and those of various sexual orientations. Victims of crimes such as assault, rape, theft, burglary, fraud (to name a few) may well experience rage.

Some rage is expressed directly to a person or group - we have seen much of that in the news recently. Rage can be less conspicuous such as seen in subtle racism where services are diminished , denied or blocked through bureaucratic niceties.

Public discourse now has more extremes rather than thoughtful, nuanced discussion where various sides of an issue seek to understand each other.

My proposal is that rage has increasingly become more present, more accepted and thus more permissible.

We pay a price for increased rage in our communities and relationships. Understanding vanishes; listening is closed down; meanness is given license and compromise and collaboration are devalued. Since the only one we can truly know is ourselves (as we are the only being we can fully access should we seek to do so), then meditation is the point of finding the rage within and coming to honour its existence. The question for the self might be not so much why the rage but rather how can it be accepted as a true part of the self without giving it harmful voice. By knowing it, giving it a narrative that is both honest and compassionate, rage can be a teacher of where some of our deepest hurts lie within. From there comes acceptance and forgiveness disarming the rage.

Our society needs more of this. By giving the compassion and understanding to self, we can begin to give it to others. We can choose what we put into the world - is rage our gift? Meditate upon the emotion within and let the sun set on its power but still accept its presence.

Rage Born

Acquaintance with the strap
Came early
Not as victim
First just as witness
Obey and you will not meet
Rules sublime and obscure
Obvious offences there for sure
These were not feared
Transgressions of the unknown
Terrifying
Leading to the flying leather
Targeting the hand
Just below the fingers
Delivering burning pain
What charge had led to the conviction
Where be the judge and jury
Bearing witness to the guilt
No defence possible
Only sentencing of whatever
The jailor decides
Rage incited in the child
Growing with each punishment
Held in but real
When to be expressed
Surely it must
For the toxin
Cannot be contained

© Peter Choate, 2017   

Lack of neutrality

Say your name out loud - what do you hear? Say it to a friend - what do they hear? There is no neutrality to our presence - not even our name. Our existence is a statement of a place in this world. What we do impacts self and others. There is no neutral act. When we make a statement, whether the audience is the self or others, the statement has meaning - again no neutrality.

Everything about us has impacts!

I was thinking about this today as I sat in a coffee shop. Two guys came in, one holding a cup from a different coffee shop. He threw it out and then he and his colleague sat down, plugged in their electronics and proceeded to use the space while buying nothing. In some ways, they stole money from the coffee shop by using already crowded space and the electricity. As there were places available, did they think about their impact. Possibly - I will never know. But then I realized that, regardless of their motivations, I was impacted and was then talking to my wife about it. She was then impacted. The trickle effect.

The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron uses a term that resonates with me - shenpa. In essence, this means that actions, thoughts, ideas all begin a cascade - one event upon another. Within self, we are the ones who can either stop the cascade or carry it on. Clearly, I carried it on but, to what purpose. My thinking did not change their behaviours - it only impinged upon myself.

This is so true of us as humans that we begin acting and reacting without giving ourselves time to consider. Anger - lash out; envy - get even; annoyance - ruminate; betrayal - plot. The same is true of happy emotion. There are so many things that cause us to react and we so desperately want to be in control when acceptance is all we have. Me, myself and I are all that I can truly know and even then, control is often hard to grasp. We may not control what we feel but we can know it and accept that truth - however ugly.

Acceptance is particularly hard when we see injustice and cannot change it. Even harder is the seeing of death that won't be avoided but could have been prevented. In social work, we see this often - murder, suicide, addiction, mental health, domestic violence. Acceptance should not be confused with permission or condoning. Accepting that racism exists is not giving permission but knowing that the only racism you can control is your own. By actions, we personally demonstrate a morality and thus, are not neutral but we cannot stop another from being racist, an addict and so on.

Meditation is a process where we let reality of the moment just be. Not easy. I know that I am far less reactive because of meditation but far more reactive than I would like to be.

Life is a journey and the best fork in the road is not always chosen but we will  come to another intersection and get to make a different choice. It is not beating yourself up when you react, but being compassionate awaiting the moment for the next choice without judgment.

Only I

The moment is dark
There is no guidance
I am alone

I beg for light
Yet none comes
I must grip in the darkness

Feeling each step
I move somewhere
Uncertain of where

The silence explodes
Nothing to be heard
Everything imagined

I reach out to touch
Finding only emptiness
My hand pulls back

I hear my breath
I touch my body
I am what there is

© Peter Choate 2017

Being Real

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you really wanted to explain how you feel - but were afraid to? Worried about being judged? Convinced it would lead to an unpleasant outcome? There are certainly times when keeping our opinion to ourselves makes sense. In our society, however, being able to truly tell people how you feel is treacherous territory.

For generations, we have been telling people things like, "stiff upper lip", "boys don't cry", "pick yourself up and get on with it" or, as Frank Sinatra said:

Take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.

But don't let people know how you really feel, how hurt you are, how betrayed you feel or even how much you are feeling like giving up.

Imagine you are on a plane, watching a movie that really impacts you - do you let yourself cry? Most people will say no or, if they say yes, they will find some socially appropriate way to downplay it - "Sad movies always make me cry."

In my view, we are at a place were honest emotion is needed rather than emotions that tie to a particular political mantra. We are too much in the you are wrong and I am right dialogue these days. What if we can really connect, instead, to what we feel - people out of work; children injured and suffering; refugees fleeing desperate civil wars; as well as personal tragedies such as a man who I know who committed suicide recently.

The pattern of hiding what we feel starts in childhood and becomes engrained. In my growing up, I learned not to let anyone know if I was not feeling safe or I was afraid - that led to more bullying as then I was seen as weak. These patterns carry on into adulthood distancing us from people even very close.

Meditation offers us a chance to know how we are truly feeling using the body to tell us what's going on and granting permission for our emotions to speak to us. In other words, it allows us to be human especially to our own self. Vulnerability to the self, or as Brene Brown states:

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” 

To find the soul
Reach into the body
Feel the pain
Where fear resides

Look to the place
Where love might bloom
The heart
The centre of existence

Loss is searing
Bursting the gut
Tearing away the strength
Collapsing the legs

Eyes water
Sight fogs
The head pounds
Dizziness abounds

Crawl the pathway
Touch the soul
Caress the life
That you possess

© Peter Choate, 2017