Prerequisites

I’m still wading through Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. I can only take mind-blowing awareness in small chunks! The latest chunk being:

The important thing to know about worthiness is that it doesn’t have prerequisites. Most of us, on the other hand, have a long list of worthiness prerequisites [most of which] fall in the categories of accomplishments, acquisitions, and external acceptance. It’s the if/when problem (“I’ll be worthy when…” or “I’ll be worthy if…”)

Sound familiar?

To me it does. And yet. I have other quotes to help combat this if/when thought habit.

One of which is on my fridge, and comes from a book on auditioning, actually: “There are no mistakes, only misinterpretations.”

Brene talks a lot about the difference between shame and guilt. Shame = I am bad. Guilt = I did something bad. With guilt, your inherent worth and worthiness is not called into question, and she encourages us to use “guilt self-talk” instead of “shame self-talk,” if we have to use anything at all.

Which, we usually do, because… we all make misinterpretations!

It’s interesting. Yesterday, I got the chance to spend some time with a coworker’s 10-year old daughter who was home for the summer, but didn’t have anywhere to be this week. After way too many days watching t.v. on her phone, I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk yesterday. And so we did.

We walked to the nearby park, and when we got to the water and I encouraged her to touch the cool, lapping stream, she was surprised and delighted, and asked if we could walk in it.

Well, I wasn’t expecting to do that, but SURE! Off come the socks and shoes and into the shallows we go.

On our walk back to civilization (a whole block away), she was reporting a story to me about something that had happened with her father the day before. A story that would likely be categorized as one of Road Rage. As she told the story, I experienced many reactions and opinions. Aghast, sad, worried, judgmental, superior.

But what I said was, "There are many different ways to handle situations, and that was one way to handle it."

I’m NOT the person to tell her her father was wrong, inappropriate, endangering, or negligent. I am the person, in that little short hour, to tell her, Yes, we can play in the water, and you are safe with me. I am not going to pile my opinions onto you, because I know you’re making your own.

You go ahead and love your dad. You observe him, and make your own choices. You be influenced by who and how he is, and you’ll have the chance to work through any of that if you need to.

But for right now... I didn’t even say, "That sounds scary," because she wasn’t telling it that way. She was reporting, to see how I’d react, I think. Was what he was doing appropriate? Wasn’t that funny or awful? No. It was neither. It was human.

(As I write this, I realize that I can use this lesson and aim it in a parental direction in my own life.)

It’s slow-going through Brene’s book, because there’s so much meat to her observations and suggestions.

But her lamplight to guide us and offer hope on this journey of misinterpretations is as follows:

Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we’re headed in the right direction.

By not attaching my own value or values to this little girl’s experience, I get to let her have her own North Star and continue to follow mine. No ifs, whens or buts.