I’m sure most people are familiar with The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz. He writes that these four principles are templates to help us achieve wisdom and integrity in our lives and relationships:
- Be Impeccable With Your Word
- Don’t Take Anything Personally
- Don’t Make Assumptions
- Always Do Your Best
I like to think that I hit most of these, some of the time (truly a ringing endorsement if ever there was one).
None of it is easy and some days are more challenging than others, but these last months have been somewhat more interesting in one area. Having a friend with behaviourial changes from brain cancer brings new meaning and despairing new depths to ‘not taking it personally’.
If I recall the book correctly, Ruiz uses the example that if someone described you as purple, you would know it’s ridiculous and realize it’s their own issues and projections at work.
But what if their words are more subtle than that?
What if your friend sounds completely reasonable while she talks about needing to run some errands with the car? Sounds okay right? Except that she’s having seizures and the doctor has just explained she can not drive.
What if your friend, the woman you’ve known and loved for a lifetime, leaves a voicemail message, completely distraught and crying for your help and a little while later is sending happy texts and thanking you for being here and how wonderful it is to be reconnected? What if she’s thanking you for this reconnection (and also wondering where you’ve been) when the reason you’ve been away for a few days is because it seemed prudent not to agitate her as she was furious at you for some other random reason that had been conjured in the firestorms of her brain?
It has become a game of deflecting responses, answering others and changing the subject. And let me go on record that I’m not much of game-loving person. Perhaps it’s all my literal fundamentalist upbringing, but I get very confused when people aren’t saying what they mean. I don’t understand ‘agendas’.
I was never one of those girls in high school that shifted into strange and coy silliness when boys came around. I simply was unable to comprehend that behaviour. Like Popeye, I am what I am and I expect you to be too.
And so, I am working on something I learned long ago at a ten-day silent retreat: that it’s okay to feel the emotion and pain of her anger and rejection, that emotions are simply weather and I need to let them pass through me like a cloud moving through the sky or like a lightning bolt ripping through another chunk of my bruised and bleeding heart.
Regardless of how I struggle to describe this new crazy-making world we now inhabit, there is one fundamental principle I remind myself of every minute;
In every sense of the meaning…this simply is not about me.
sounds so simple to not make “it” about us but so damn hard.
p.s. thanks for introducing me to that wonderful song
It really does sound so simple when someone says ‘don’t take it personally’ but you’re right, I think it’s one of the hardest things to do…and so glad you love that song too. I just heard another one of their songs and it was just as compelling.
A casual acquaintance died last night and I feel gobsmacked. Stunned that before I knew anything was wrong he was already gone. Apparently he hid it from almost everyone until about 10 days ago, having known since July.
I’m listening to the song you’ve linked here, over and over, getting in that sonic groove that grounds me into a feeling and a sense of awareness beyond the veil separating the planes of existence, thinking of Vern, of you and your friend, and the people I still miss so long after they left, barely known.
I am so grateful you have this time with your friend even with all of these dark moments and shifting ground – knowing you the alternative would be much worse, as it was for some of Vern’s friends who did not get to say goodbye.
It’s frightening to think of how taken for granted so many of our friendships are, that we could be turned away into that churning busy-ness of our lives and miss a soul departing… yet how many I know I love, who are so dear to me. I wish I could just be in their company (and you know you are one of them) all the time, investment into the inevitable partings.
Life is beautiful. People are beautiful. Dying, too, can bring its own terrible, awful beauty. I am so glad for your friend that you are there.
Laurie, you wrapped it all up perfectly when you wrote that ‘dying, too, can bring its own terrible, awful beauty.’ There is something so profound and deep about sharing the truth of how we feel about each other, a truth that is somehow only brought to the fore when we are in throes of these experiences.
It’s probably a good thing that we don’t live this way all the time, because, quite frankly, I don’t think I could handle living so raw and emotionally vulnerable as I am right now. I feel hungover all the time and there’s not a drink in sight…
I know what you mean about wishing we could be with our friends more, but as you know, there is no way to be with each other all the time (there’s too many of us:) But watching the way the community, friends and family have rallied in the face of this sadness, fills me with hope and gratitude and the knowledge that when things get serious, we all show up.
I’m so glad you appreciate that song as much as I do. I just find it hits that ineffable something that connects us all.
Perfect photo to go with the text.
Glad you agree Sharon. Kind of feels like we’re in the middle of a tsunami.
Oh, wow. I’m so sorry Colleen. Stay strong.
Thanks Carol. I’m taking lots of walks in the woods to try to stay sane.