It was quite the funny thing. I was sitting in the computer room typing a paper, and my six year old son was in the living room playing. I could hear him hopping around like little kids do, probably smashing toys into one another as he scurried around the room.
Then, it got really quiet. I was a little concerned, but I figured that whatever dilemma caused the silence would finally find a resolution, or maybe, it had already reached its point of resolution.
My son walked in the computer room with his head down. I asked him if he was okay. He looked up and said "Mommy, I really did it this time. I REALLY DID IT THIS TIME..." and he began to sob, but his breathing was weird. You know that "cry snarl" that little kids have, where snot blows out and they can't breath? My son didn't have that. He was crying through his mouth, and it sounded like his nose was stuffed up. I told him to calm down, and let me know the truth about what happened.
He said that he found a marble and decided to stick it in his nose because he was curious if the marble could fit. Then he said, he tried to get it out, but in the process, he stuck the marble further in his nose. He said the more he tried to grab it, the further it went in, and the more scared he became that it was going to go in his brain and do all kinds of craziness things. He was frightened too that he would get in trouble for doing this. I explained to him that of course he wouldn't be in trouble for exploring and not to worry about that. He uttered a little "whew" with an exit of a little bit of kid spit and tears. More concerning, I said to him, was making sure we got the marble out, and that ultimately, I wanted to reassure him that EVERYTHING was going to be okay.
I told him to take a deep breath in his mouth, and hold it in. I demonstrated for him what this would look like. Then I told him to put his finger onto the nostril without the marble in it, and push it in, until it was closed. I told him that once I took that deep breath in, to push the air into his nose to make the marble come out like a torpedo. Again, I showed him what this would look like. I can only imagine for a a six year old what this may have felt like. I could see in his eyes that he was really scared that the marble would not come out. I could see that he felt terribly responsible for what had happened, and had most likely wished it had not happened. I'm sure he had already convinced himself that it wouldn't work - how could he know it would work if he'd never done it before? He had no experience in this lifetime to compare this to. But he trusted me enough to tell me what was wrong, hoping that I would have an answer.
He took a deep breath, and kind of had a little tear coming out of his left eye, a hopeful tear that this would accomplish the goal of getting rid of the foreign object in his nose. He put his finger on the empty nostril, and with all of his might, he pushed with his gut. When he exhaled, just as I had demonstrated, out came the marble like a rocket, hitting the wall so hard, that it left a mark. He began to cry...almost laugh at the same time, and he came to hug me, thanking me for helping him. I asked him "What does this teach you?" He said "Don't put marbles in my nose." That was the obvious lesson.
What I said to him was that sometimes, and I meant this metaphorically, we put marbles in our nose even when we know there is potential for damage. That is called being human. I told him, however, that we run into problems when we don't ask for help. We run into bigger problems when we're not honest about how the problem happened. I asked him "If your arm hurts because you hurt it, and you go to the doctor to get it fixed, but you tell him your foot hurts, he's gonna fix the wrong thing - and then your arm is going to get worse, to the point where it can become infected deep within, and cause bigger problems that require bigger ways to fix it in the long run.
I also asked him "If you had told me nothing, what would have happened?" He said "Bad things." I told him that being truthful about what happened, even if it was scary and hard, is the easiest path toward a resolution. It's a harder path to take because it takes guts. But in the long run, it will get you closer to an answer than if you either do nothing, or lie about what is happening.
My son is now 18 years old. Whenever anything is going on with him that is challenging, emotionally, physically, spiritually...he comes to me and tells me. He now has many experiences that let him know that I will most likely have an answer. He also knows that if I don't have an answer, I will go where the answers are. A resolution has often times been found not only because he asked me; but because he was HONEST about what the problem was, where the cause most likely happened, and how big the dilemma within the problem truly was.
This applies to every day life. We often times try to pin issues on subjects that have nothing to do with the issue's creation. We do this dishonestly - and then have trouble figuring out why we can't find an ending that is appropriate. Someone in my past once blamed the fact that they called me pretentious and selfish, on my boyfriend who would not stop talking about me. The problem is that this particular relationship never found a resolution. The more I tried to make it right, and I TRIED with all of my might, the worse it got...because, I WASN'T THE PROBLEM. It had no solution, because what and who was being blamed was not the issue. Sometimes, being honest with yourself about what's happening is extremely hard to do. The reality is, however, that if you do not look at an ailment for what it is...an AILMENT....and figure out honestly what CAUSED IT....change the circumstances behind the cause, whether it be behavior, or just involvement that needs to go away....it is never going to get fixed. If you are sad because of something someone did to you 30 years ago, and you continue to blame a ghost from 30 years ago for your sadness, your sadness will never go away. Your ghost is not what is responsible for fixing it 30 years later. You are. This may not seem fair - but it is the reality.
Facing things honestly takes character and courage that has to be built and worked on every day. A friend told me about that "Internal Voice"...she called it IV (IVY - what a pretty name)...the voice that tells us to continue down that path of self doubt, self pity, blaming others for our current circumstances...and how we seriously have to take it upon ourselves to tell IV to "shut the hell up." IV won't shut up on her/his own, because IV is us.
Stop the blame name game. If you are sad, change it. If you are unhappy, change it. If you can't stop something, there is no circumstance that is keeping you from stopping it. When you get up in the morning, and lay down to go to sleep at night, there is only one person with you in both processes. You. When you wake up, what do you tell yourself your day is going to be like and when you go to sleep, how do you evaluate what you've allowed and not allowed in your life for that day? I hear people often times say "I have no choice." Well...you have no choice, because you CHOOSE to have no choice. Everyone has a choice.
We are responsible for the truth. We are responsible for how we deal with the truth. We are responsible for accepting the causes of the truth. The truth doesn't go anywhere. It stays where it starts, and eventually, you're going to stumble upon it. Are you going to pick it up and analyze it so that you can finally put it to rest, or are you going to keep walking over it, hoping that it becomes someone else's problem.
If it's got your name on it, no one else is going to waste their time fixing it.
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