‘Reality is an ancient form of crowd control that has gotten out of hand.’ Lily Tomlin
The age of planet earth is said to be 4.543 billion years.
That is a long time.
Homo Sapiens – us – have been around 200, 000 years.
If we live to 100 years that is .005 % of time Homo Sapiens have existed.
Perspective
As a young child I knew that the atrocities I learned about would never happen again.
I want to invent a little cap people would wear as they age with little wires that come down from the hat and hook onto the corners of their mouths and pull them up again. We all look so unhappy…are we…or is it just our mouths?
What is cynicism exactly? We talk about it a lot.
To me cynicism means: our attempt to avoid a painful feeling of vulnerability. Vulnerability to rejection and shame.
Someone wrote me this week and said, Bix, you won’t remember me, but I sure remember you. It was a grey Montreal October in 1986 when you led the 2nd weekend of my forum. You were on fire. You changed my life in ways that are hard to explain in words. From the bottom of my soul, thank you.
Am I that person I was 30 years ago? I want to be.
But I cry much more easily now.
I love the Salish First Nation quote: ‘It is not about the world we are leaving for our children. It is about the children we are leaving for the world.’
Our children do the work of what my son calls rounding the stone. It sometimes feels like water running over a stone but mostly it is little tragedies that are very big at the time that take chunks of us and remind us of our helplessness.
Who are we for our children? Who am I for my children?
So where am I taking you with this?
Watch the YouTube ‘I’m a Believer’ clip from the movie Shrek.
There is The Dragon, Shrek, Donkey, Princess Fiona, Puss in Boots, The Gingerbread Man (on a crutch), 3 Little Pigs, Pinocchio, Three Blind Mice, Farkle, Ferguson and Felicia, Queen Lillian and King Harold, Doris, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Merlin, Brogan, Cookie, Gretchen, Humpty Dumpty, and Kitty Softpaws all dancing, singing and rocking out to ‘I’m a Believer’.
Could we live our lives scripted from that scene? I want to.
I know it’s a fairy tale. It makes us happy to watch it.
When did we get the memo, ‘That’s not real life?’
What if we embodied that scene in our everyday lives? What could happen?
Maybe start with ‘soft eyes’.
2 episodes of The Wire refer to ‘soft eyes’.
The show’s characters use this phrase to suggest that hard eyes are limited in what they can perceive, because they’re focused mainly on surface pieces.
Soft eyes, on the other hand, are more flexible and therefore able to perceive additional layers and dimensions. Hat tip to The Wire for that.
I suggest ‘soft eyes’ to my clients in a less poetic context.
I tell them: Literally, soften your eyes. Relax your eye sockets.
Let your tight ’serious’ face take a breath. In your eyes, ease up. When you’re engaging with someone and you’ve got soft eyes, the message your eyes send is ‘I’m with you’. Even if you’re firing them, challenging their assumptions, or delivering bad news, soft eyes are a powerful non-verbal cue that creates a felt sense of connection, instead of separateness and judgment.
Soft eyes say ‘I’m disagreeing with your logic, not your worthiness.’
Soft eyes say ‘Yes, I’m the bearer of bad news. I’m sorry.’
Soft eyes say ‘You deserve my full attention. Here, you have it.’
Soft eyes convey love.
Body language supplements our spoken words with compassion and connection. This makes it possible for the most important conversations to unfold without anyone personalizing the situation and everyone walks away feeling known and respected.
Start dancing, even if you have a crutch.