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I think we are born with a simple, honest and straight-forward way of dealing with life experiences. I watch my grandchildren; I listen to their un-softened hard truth. Somewhere along the way to age 5 we are taught to edit ourselves. "Don't tell Grammy the top of her hair is running out of brown. You might hurt her feelings."
I believe we go through patterns as we live. There is a pattern to how toddlers think, teens, thirty-somethings... Having lost my parents at a very early age, I didn't have the advantage of learning how to do this part of life. How do I age with grace? How do I accept that my body won't do everything it used to? ... One thing surprised me; I had no idea that we are given the chance to look at all of our "givens" and question them. It seems that everything I was positive about has become a question.
Painfully at times, with joy at other times, I reflect on my life. What worked – what didn't? IT IS SO HARD NOT BEING RIGHT ALL THE TIME! It was so much easier when I didn't doubt myself. I was always in control, made all the decisions because, after all, I knew best. Humble? What's that?
There are times that I see lesson 12 with such clarity it's almost scary. How many times I have used the posture, "I'm fragile-don't say anything that will hurt my feelings," are countless. Or the reverse, " you better not say anything or I'll bite your head off!"
Lesson four has been invaluable to me the longer I've been "out" of the program. I've gone back to the principles taught in that lesson over and over. At the time I was going through the program I found it horribly difficult to accept that the world doesn't run the way it "should." My questioning has given me so much more tolerance, so much more faith that things will turn out just fine. I see there is no magic way that everyone "should" follow. We may all have arrived in different ships but we really are all in the same boat, trying to achieve very similar destinations.
"If a child lives with criticism, she learns to criticize..." Not only others, but herself. I'm a great student! The older I get the clearer it is that I learned the art of critiquing well enough to be a food critic, movie critic... The wiser I become the more I realize how this trait holds me back. Lesson three helps me over-ride that old conditioning. I will be doing lesson three for the rest of my life, and it isn't a burden.
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