For as long as she was a person who could communicate readily with me, Harriet made it known that the world is wide and invites exploration. She was always such a cultured human. She explored the world in so many ways. Not just her vast domestic and global travel, but also in the way that she supported the arts. She understood the magical escape that is available as you stroll around a museum or art gallery. She recognized how music and dance can elevate the soul and transport you elsewhere for a few hours.
Although Harriet went on some extravagant and amazing adventures, the travel was never really about anything fancy per se. She didn’t necessarily have lofty expectations…to have a boast-worthy trip. She was enthralled with the world at large. She loved color and flavor and people and sites.
She was somewhat fearful in certain areas of her life, like presenting herself honestly in some of her relationships, but was bold and fearless in so many other areas, travel being one of them. When it came to journeying to the furthest reaches of the globe, she was hungry and courageous.
She had this quality that used to embarrass me as a child and then one day, all the things dawned on me and my perspective completely shifted.
She was respectful of other cultures and traditions but she still treated everyone equally, in the broadest sense of the concept. She expected certain things and didn’t believe that accessibility or availability should have anything to do with it. She wasn’t exerting privilege in this way, but she was asserting this core belief that who you are and what you have has absolutely nothing to do with how you behave.
She unabashedly asked questions so that she could understand people and places better. She didn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed to demand, to query, to explore, and to prod. Whenever I challenged this notion or even her entire approach, (or occasionally expressed embarrassment) she would always respond by telling me that whoever she had been communicating with understood that she was well intended. They understood that she was only trying to educate herself and not criticize their way of life. I didn’t always agree with her here, but I truly respected that she believed that at her core.
It is that dedication to her truth that I want to explore here. Harriet didn’t just support the notion that we should journey behind the confines of our immediate environment, though that was certain part of it. She firmly supported the notions of curiosity and intentionality. One must always explore. One must always ask all the questions. One must always wonder how and why. One must never grow tired of trying to understand things more deeply and more significantly. She didn’t gently request that I explain a work story in greater depth. She demanded it. She expected it. It wasn’t enough to understand something on the most surface level. She wanted more. She needed more. God help the human who told Harriet that it didn’t matter. It wasn’t for YOU (peon) to determine whether Gram needed certain information. Enough was only enough when she determined it to be so, and that was that.
If ever I told her that I thought her exploration abrasive or offensive or “too much”, she would respond by explaining that anyone who met her or knew her would think anything but that. She placed great weight in ‘the reasons why’. Whenever I would tell her that I was frustrated with someone and their behavior, she would ask me to consider why they were doing what they were doing. Many conversations with Harriet (and a few therapists) led me to understand that we can’t ever know what another person was or is thinking, but we can know enough to judge their behavior either harmless or nefarious, or somewhere in between. That we can do.
This concept works on the flip side too. I have two girlfriends who have both separately but distinctly accused me of having less than pure intentions. My response to them was always, ‘but don’t you know me at all’? That’s not to say that I am entirely innocent and always have the most generous of intentions. That is only to say that if I am close to someone, they would know that if I had something to say or needed something from them, I would express it clearly. There would be no mystery or guess work. Thus, the person that is accusing me of such things, is likely projecting. They are coming from that place themselves. They are taking feelings they’ve had towards me or the world at large or towards themselves and they are seeing things where no such things exist.
In those situations, I would also offer a bit of Harriet advice when it comes to how to proceed. When I was questioning Gram and her relentless pursuit of information, after she explained that the exploration was clearly harmless and obvious to all involved, she would explain that if someone were to assign some negative feeling to her process, that was entirely their problem and theirs alone. In fact, if they were to take her approach to an extreme and back up as a result, she would let them do so without resistance. Now, if you knew my Gram in her heyday, you would know that this was pure baloney. No one was getting off that easy. HOWEVER, I’ve been trying to take that sentiment to heart more and more lately.
We can’t make people see us a certain way. We can’t mold their impressions or change their minds. We can do what we can to try and move the needle, but that doesn’t always work. Therefore, we need to find a way to start to let go or walk away when we recognize that our effort is futile. This goes to the whole ‘letting go’ discussion we had a few weeks ago, so I’m not going to regurgitate all we explored. I am just going to tell you that while there is no easy way to do this, if you keep their reaction as a mantra, it certainly helps.
You know what I mean by that? Well, what I mean is not ‘I’m sorry I hurt you’ (unless you did and you are) but ‘I’m sorry you feel hurt by me.’ What I mean is not ‘I’ll try and change so that you feel better about me as your friend’ but ‘I’m sorry that I can’t be the kind of friend you need right now/ever.’ What I mean is not ‘I won’t ask about ______ again’ but ‘given the rules you’ve imposed on our friendship, I have to give some thought as to where to go from here.’
These are VERY difficult thoughts and conversations, but what I do know is that when we inhabit the teeny tiny, ever-shrinking worlds of relationships that don’t serve us and fail to look around and fail to react because of fear, we stay very small and very closed off. And the truth is, the world IS too vast and too beautiful and too filled with good people to do that.
That’s just the truth.
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 