this doesn’t mean you must invite him to dinner
Wednesday 2 August 2006 | I like a cookie
California’s answer to the World-Honored One, Ms. Byron Katie, (not a bad answer at all) has, as usual, some outlandishly useful relationship insights:
After you have turned around the judgments on the worksheet (asking if they are as true or truer), turn Number 6 around using “I am willing…” and “I look forward to…”
For example, “I don’t ever want to experience another argument with Paul” turns around to “I am willing to experience an argument with Paul” and “I look forward to experiencing an argument with Paul.” Why would you look forward to it? Number 6 is about fully embracing all of mind and life without fear, and being open to reality. If you experience an argument with Paul again, good. If it hurts, you can put your thoughts on paper and investigate them. Uncomfortable feelings are merely the reminders that we’ve attached to something that may not be true for us. They let us know that it’s time to do The Work.
Until you can see the enemy as a friend, your Work is not done. This doesn’t mean you must invite him to dinner. Friendship is an internal experience. You may never see him again, you may even divorce him, but as you think about him are you feeling stress or peace?
This idea did influence my acknowledging the fait accompli dissolution of my marriage; it bears some resemblance to what Voldemort used to call, in wiser moments, “finding the position,” and what the Sponsor more plainly refers to as, “The distance from which you can love someone best.”
Because some people I can love best when they’re in another household, city, state, country. (As John Bradshaw once said to a young alcoholic wringing his hands over a dreaded visit home, “Honestly, your mother sounds like a monster. And what’s the right distance to be from a monster? Very, very far away!”) Some people I can love best when I talk to them on the phone every other day. Some people I can love best when I see them for a week once a year. Some people I love best when their toothbrush is proximate to mine.
The question is, since the tiger will be a tiger—if the Brujo will brujo, just as I unreliably narrate, Mandarin mandarins, the Librarian librarians, and Voldemort voldemorts—how can I organize myself in healthy relationship to the tiger’s stripes? and its teeth? How far away do I need to be from them? Red-and-black Gila monsters are lovely and rare, and I’ve always wanted to see one; but I have no particular desire to be masticated by its powerfully locked and grinding, milky-venom-injecting jaws.
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