I must have walked past the climbing wall at the YMCA a few hundred times, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I noticed a group of climbers crawling.
I stopped my car and stood outside watching with great curiosity as the climbers tried to reach the artificial stones to find the right nub to hold their hands and feet. The moment they found something to hold on to, they pulled the rope and climbed to the next higher point.
I stood there in awe of the grace and agility with which these climbers moved from one stone to another. When I saw the huge straight wall I wondered why people put themselves through so much pain and anguish in the name of sport. The vicarious pleasure was good enough for me. I had no intention of trying it out for myself!
Ten minutes later I was back in my car driving to the club to catch up with a friend and have a glass of wine.
While we were sitting at the bar, my friend told me that her husband had lost his job and that they would have to move out of their house to a smaller house and that she might have to change the children’s school.
She was upset and really scared that her husband would go into a state of depression. She was starting to blame himself for not seeing it coming and beating himself up for not being her ideal husband/father. He was being extremely hard on himself.
She, on the other hand, was trying to be optimistic and encouraging him to look at the various options. Even though she was upset, she was handling it quite well. Being a student of Vedanta and Positive Psychology had given him the inner strength to cope with external turmoil.
Her husband, on the other hand, had spent all his time building his career and lifestyle. Her self-esteem totally depended on her net worth. The very thought of not being able to provide for his family in the way they had grown accustomed to was making him extremely nervous and all he could concentrate on was the lack that was evident.
We chatted for a while and then I shared with her my observation of the climbing wall.
When one is standing at ground level and staring at the wall or huge boulder, the odds of climbing seem insurmountable. All you have to do is take the first step, find your first foothold, and crawl to the next safe point. You need to let go of the previous bump to securely hold on to the next one. You can’t keep clinging to the first and expect to get to the top. Only when you let go can you find the next safe step.
She understood the analogy and we agreed that I would meet with her husband and share some thoughts and see if we could help him transition to a new life.
This is how the dialogue went. Let’s call him Jack.
“Hi Jack”,
“Hello Shveita, what’s up? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, all wonderful, but hey, I’m sorry to hear about the job.”
“Yeah, that was a bit of a bummer, I kind of expected it, but I never thought it would happen. Those… they have no idea who they’ve let go. They’ll regret it to the core.”
(This was good. Her sadness was now turning to anger. On a vibrational* scale, anger is better than guilt and shame.)
He went on to use some swear words to describe his employer and how he had been wronged and how he would get revenge.
However, underneath all this macho charade I could see the pain and sadness in his eyes. She was very scared and very insecure.
I ordered two glasses of red wine, although alcohol is a depressant and not recommended during therapy, in this case it seemed appropriate (we weren’t in therapy…we were in a bar) as it really helped Jack lower his inhibitions and really come through with their pain and fear of survival.
It is quite interesting how the male and female brain is connected. The human male is generally more left-brained, while the female tends to take a more right-brained approach.
left brain
Logical
Sequential
rational
Analytical
Goal
look at parts
right brain
Random
Intuitive
holistic
synthesizing
Subjective
look at the integers
Jack’s logical, sequential, rational, objective brain couldn’t see the big picture. All he could focus on was the loss of the job which would lead to the loss of the lifestyle. He felt useless and began to visualize scenarios in which he felt unwanted and useless. Suddenly, all of his achievements meant nothing. He began to focus on all the things that could go wrong with this event. He suddenly turned into a psychic and began to see his future very bleakly ‘self-created’.
However, at this stage, the only thing he had lost was his job and that too with 6 months’ pay intact. He had bonuses and stock options with his company that he could cash in and live comfortably for many years.
But his ‘partially focused’ brain refused to see and acknowledge that this was, in some strange way, the opportunity he had been waiting for. She could finally spend time with his family, indulge in his various passions, cooking being the main one, and finally make that trip to Tibet.
If one changes the color of the glasses, the whole picture changes.
Like the climber who focuses on only one step at a time, one should consider only the things that can help him get out of the rut.
The glass of wine had helped us both. Before I got ready to order another one, Jack and I did an exercise.
I asked her to write down on a piece of paper all the things that were going well in her life. As she began to write and her list grew longer and longer, she realized that she had so much going for her and that his work was such a small part of her life. It wasn’t really work that she missed; it was the meaning she had given to work. Now she had to find that meaning in her life.
What is really the meaning of life?
Now that’s a whole new chapter
love/luck/happiness
Shveita Sethi Sharma