Today I was feeling irritable and frustrated, and I snapped at my daughter, who was already not pleased. She looked at me, upset, with tears in her eyes, and said, "Mama, you choosed angry, and now I'm choosing sad!" Wow. Once again, this small child pulls everything into perspective - cuts to the heart of the matter with an insight, clarity, and honesty that astounds me. Yes: I was choosing to feel anger. And in response, she was choosing to feel sad. I had a choice in how I responded to the circumstances. I had a choice in what I thought, and in what thoughts I accepted as valid and which I rejected. I had a choice in what I did with what I decided to feel.
If I can't find my children's shoes, can I still choose to feel joy? If I am tired, does that mean that my only option is to feel miserable? If I am nursing the baby, and my toddler is on the counter putting rice in the sugar, and sugar in the rice AGAIN - is my only recourse to feel awful, and to blame him for it? If I my preschooler tells me, "No!" do I have to feel anger?
While mainstream parenting says that children are responsible for their parents emotions ("If you didn't jump on the couch, I wouldn't be angry at you! You made me mad! Why do you do that? Stop making me get angry with you!") This idea - that other people cause our emotions, and have a responsibility for how we feel - is pervasive in our society. He made me cry. She makes him happy. You made me sad. He made his boss angry.
The truth of the matter is that no one can MAKE you feel anything. They do not possess a magical control over your emotions. Their behavior can influence us, often it triggers pre-set responses (either from habit, or from deep beliefs that a certain situation calls for a certain reaction.) But no one controls our emotions. My children do not force me to be angry. They do not force me to feel irritable or overwhelmed. These are things that I CHOOSE to do.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
-- Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
One of the greatest, most fully empowering realizations that a person can have is that we alone decide how we feel, and that joy is a choice that is available to each of us no matter what the circumstances. We can choose compassion. We can choose peace. We can choose connection.
I choosed angry. And now I'm choosing grateful.
Tonight, after 3 AM I was at my limit - the kids were still awake, baby was starting to wake up, and I was SO tired. Fairy started to complain about something, and I snapped, "Nice Mommy is gone!" when she started to repeat herself, I cut her off and repeated very angrily that "Nice Mommy" wasn't there anymore. Not a shining moment for mama. As I was sitting there, trying to get fussy baby to nurse to sleep, feeling tears of frustration and fatigue and resentment and remorse, I felt a little hand on my arm. I thought it was my toddler trying to get my to lie down so he could hold my hair, but then I realized it was Mermaid, reaching across him. She was stroking my arm gently, and I patted her hand. Then she said... so very tender and so very calm:"Mommy, you're only you. There's no other one. And you're nice. You're happy." (Happy being a state of being, a character trait, rather than necessarily an emotion, for my kids. The "good" character in a movie is "happy" in their lingo.) I was floored. Awed by how wise this little person can be. And how utterly compassionate. It felt holy.
I've been working on keeping a more positive perspective, thinking about intention and manifesting, and my daughters had heard me talking to my husband about "positive thinking" and such for some time, and one day Sarah asked me about it. I told her that I was trying to hold onto happy thoughts, so I could stay calm when I was frustrated or angry. A few days later, when Mermaid and Fairy were having some debate, I ended up taking Mermaid on my lap for a moment. (Fairy didn't want the connection at that time, she was distracted by something else.) I validated her for a moment, and then she said, "I don't have any happy thoughts, I only have angry thoughts." I said, "Would you like me to help you think of some happy thoughts?" and she said yes. So I talked about her and Fairy on the beach, playing in the water, sunshine, seagulls... and Fairy came over and sat with us too to hear about happy Mermaid and Fairy playing together. The next day, they were arguing and I offered my lap and they both wanted to sit with me (one on each knee is our habit). I validated them for a couple moments, and then Mermaid said, "Okay, I have happy thoughts now." Fairy said in a very upset voice, "I have ANGRY thoughts." I said, "Maybe Mermaid will tell you her happy thoughts? Mermaid, do you want to do that?" Mermaid sat back down, and took Fairy's hand, and said, "We're holding hands on the beach, and there's sunshine, and we're playing in the water..." and Fairy said, "And I chase the birds?" very excitedly. It was a paraphrase of what I had verbalized the day before. It was so wonderful to see the mood change. They still didn't have resolution for what they were arguing over, but we were able to figure it out after that.
The power of connection is amazing.
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