Thinking like a duck, not a pitbull...

Learning about yourself is painful. It leaves you feeling duped by your own self perception. My latest lesson came this last week through a set of broken windshield wipers. 

I have an old, battered Toyota pickup. I picked it up last spring off a friend who was retiring it after 215,000 miles. The paint is oxidized, and its history is told in dents and scrapes on every panel. I have studied the bumper on more than one occasion and wondered what must have happened to create the odd shape it has assumed. It sounds like the flubber mobile when I drive it. 

Yet I love that darn truck like one would a loyal family dog. When it snows, I mean really snows, I can put the beast in 4 wheel low, throw a shovel in the bed just to be safe, and venture out when the rest of the mountain has retreated back to the fireplace. Not very "green" of me, but there are bits of my psyche that are proving slow to evolve.

And to be honest, since I was small I have envisioned myself living on some acreage (orange grove in Redlands, meadowy plot under Mt. Shasta, Australian sheep station) tending to four-legged creatures and pulling my muddy boots off on the porch at twilight while surveying the fruits of my labor. A utilitarian vehicle is a prop in that play. Got the truck, just waiting for the rest to materialize. 

So to be fair to my husband, I am a bit over attached to this dumb old truck. 

In the last storm the passenger side wiper quit working. I continued to drive around like a cyclops because the important blade was still functioning, and heck, if I am going to own an Australian sheep station some day, I'd better not let something so small as peripheral vision stop me from doing my work. Eventually my husband stepped in. He was sure he could fix it and relegated me to the family Subaru while he worked on it. 

But a week later, with forecasts of another storm in our corridor, my wipers still weren't fixed, and my patience was gone. When I started the truck this morning, I fumed. There was nothing on the windshield at all--no blades, no arms--my husband had performed a double amputation of my windshield wipers and the carnage was sitting in the back of the cab: a pile of giant insect-like metal wings and legs, and various other bolts and parts. 

We are going backwards on this wiper thing! I thought in frustration, and because I also possess a small concentration of pettiness and spite, I rolled down the window and said, "I hope all the parts are in the cab, because I am taking the truck into the shop."

This evoked our predictable argument that included MONEY and FINISHING WHAT YOU START. In his defense, my husband had tended to every snow berm in the neighborhood last week, and there really is only so much time in each day. In my defense, my husband has a gene that compels him to, out of pure curiosity, disassemble things that never become whole again. This time he was messing with my beloved truck.

 

I drove off in my denigrated truck to open the gym, stewing in self-righteousness and indignation. Immediately I began poisoning the gym it with my presence, subjecting the early morning crowd to my mutterings about men as I scrubbed muddy boot prints off the floor. When they all fled and left me alone, holding a bottle of Pine Sol and a scrub brush, Tina walked through the door to start our training session. In between  sets, I explained to her the injustices done to my wiper blades.

As we transitioned from one-armed rows to reverse flys, she stopped me and said, "I don't know how to say this any other way than to just say it."

I swallowed hard in the pause between her next words, and wondered if she'd employed a spy who'd seen me reach into the chip bowl at the Mexican restaurant a couple days ago. 

"You need to learn to let things go."

In my mind, I began to protest: Me?!?! I do let things go....I mean,  I am waaaay better than I used to be...

"If you are this upset about such small things now, wait until you are four weeks away from the competition and you are dieting and working out even harder. You will explode. You'd better learn to let things roll off you. I mean really, you are upset about a set of windshield wipers."

"Okay." I said looking at her and nodding. 

"You hang on to your anger and you will hang on to fat. Stress will do that. You will not be able to build the muscle you need for this."

"Okay." I managed to say the same word aloud again. 

We finished our session and parted ways. Tina said her last words, "Think like a duck." With a motion of her hand illustrating her burdens slipping off her back, she said goodbye. 

I had just been put in my place, something painful when you are eight and you have just finished throwing a temper tantrum in front of a roomful of relatives at a family party. In the stunned silence and unblinking eyes upon you, you know you're about to catch hell. You even understand that you've earned it. But as an adult, your ego bruises more deeply, and you find yourself dusting off  your collection of Wayne Dyer books. 

I spent the rest of the day doing laundry, grocery shopping, playing princess with one child and Guitar Hero with the other. But I kept bumping against the same bruise: I am too intense. This has been the barrier to godknowswhat in my life. I have indulged this behavior with words like stressed, harried, broke, put upon...when the only appropriate word for my behavior has been ugly.  

When you get a dose of clarity about yourself, it leaves you feeling small for a while. You say silly unrealistic things like, That's it, I am never going to complain again, and Nothing is ever going to upset me again. Your ego tosses and turns uncomfortably in the cradle you lovingly made for it over the years. When finally, you look up and make eye contact with the people in your life again, you get struck by their capacity to forgive you even before you forgive yourself.

The very people who regularly endure the wrath of my ego, helped me find my mojo again:

When I picked up the kids after my workout, my mom offered me air-popped popcorn and her attention.

A close friend invited me out for lunch despite my earlier whinings to her. 

My older daughter asked me to sit on the couch and watch a movie with her. 

My three year-old, dressed in thermals and a gauzy pink princess gown, wondered if I would be her prince and dance with her at the living room ball she was attending. 

And later that evening, after fixing my wiper blades, my husband stood by me at the kitchen sink with a Band Aid when I cut myself on a broken glass. 

While I spent the day repulsed by myself, my peeps were continuing to invite me into their world, even though they already knew about my capacity to overreact, to explode, to be petty. It was a humbling realization. 

Learning to live like a duck may be the biggest challenge I face in this journey. I bloom late, learn hard, and grip fiercely to the belief that I am right in every conflict. Yet the day's honesty brought me a bit closer to understanding that while I am strong arming those who have to live with me, I am also crippling myself, because you cannot experience growth without breathing deeply, without letting go. And you cannot fake these things. You either get it or you don't.