So I want to offer a bit of a caveat, a prenote, before I launch into the first few blog posts in my “Peeking over the Fence Period”. You see, usually, the KPY method takes stuff external to ourselves and immediately internalizes. We put ourselves in the situation and run from there. But my Peeking Over the Fence period started off a little differently.
My goal was to start seeing the world, the ugly parts of it that I tend to turn away from, for what they actually are — real and unexceptional. When I look back over my notebook from the time, I see the first few entries were mostly observations, with internalization being more of an afterthought; it is like my eyes needed to adjust to seeing things in a new light before I could move forward. In the interest of being honest to this project of setting out key highlights from my practice, I will share these observations. So dear reader, just hang in there and rest assured, we are only a few blogs away from some ass kicking internalizations ;).
A dear friend from grad school was in town and I invited her, her husband and their little 2 year old son over for dinner. The truth is, I knew my friend’s kid had some ‘disciplinary problems’, but nothing could have possibly prepared me for what I witnessed over dinner. No sooner had my friends stepped in the door then the 4 hour temper tantrum began. Nothing we could do would placate my friend’s son, we sang songs, played games, sent him for time-outs, but he just ran around screaming non-stop.
I looked at my friend and the anguish was plain on her face; she had told me before she felt trapped in her life, trapped by her responsibilities as a parent, but still, I know, she loves her son. Yet, in this moment, it looked to me like the suffering was so much greater than the joy and I couldn’t help wondering how many more moments were like that (alot, by my friend’s own account). Or how many moments in my own life were like that…
The thing is, this wasn’t one of those ‘horror show’ events in life, there was no rape, no devastating disease, divorce or financial ruin. This was a dinner amongst friends, an unruly child, a day in the life of a parent — it was plain old, mundane, super ordinary life. And yet, 5 people in a room were living what felt a lot like a four hour hell.
If I weren’t preparing to peek over the fence, focusing my attention on life’s little (and big) unpleasantnesses, I bet you anything I would have ignored, or at least forgotten, the feeling of that night. I would have closed one eye to the whole thing, remembering only the good food or the fact that I got to see a friend I hadn’t seen in years. But with both eyes open, the look on my friend’s face that night was seared into my memory.