Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I watched a documentary on Mister Rogers today called, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and it affected me profoundly. I’m still not sure why. So much so, that I’m taking to a blog post to try to understand it. Mister Roger’s Neighborhood was on the air for 33 years and I was born/grew up right in the middle of it. (It began airing on television in 1968 and I would be born 10 years later, in 1978.)

Once, when I was a teenager, or young adult, my mom remarked how much I had loved watching Mister Roger’s Neighborhood as a child. I thought she was crazy because I could hardly remember watching it at all – and even if I did remember it (which I didn’t!), I would have thought it was un-cool to admit I had liked watching it anyway.

Fast forward to today. I’m watching this documentary and as they begin to show footage from the set, I felt like I was seeing someone that I had dearly loved but had inexplicably forgotten. I remembered virtually everything: the furniture on his porch, the change of jacket to sweater and dress shoes to sneakers, the feeding of the fish, the trolley, the knick-knacks on the shelves (like the castle; the tree-house; the brown, grandfather clock) that would eventually be the life-size set pieces for the imaginary world - the Land Of Make-Believe; a world filled with Lady Aberlin, Daniel the Striped Tiger, King Friday the 13th, (the terrifying Lady Elaine puppet!), Henrietta Meow-Meow, and all the others.

I remembered them all so clearly! Like I had only seen them yesterday, although it’s been years! But as I sat and watched this documentary, something else began to emerge – the realization that, although I had seen the show, I had somehow missed the message. In other words, I could remember what I had seen, but I had no recollection of what I had heard.

The messages I missed as a child were these: You’re special, just for being you; I like you just the way you are; you’re feelings are real and they matter; it’s okay to be scared; it’s okay to be different;

Maybe that’s why I was so affected by what I watched in this documentary. I wondered how could so much of the visual (i.e., superficial) things have “stayed with me,” yet the things that truly mattered were somehow lost on me? As a child, I needed those messages. I needed to hear that I was okay the way I was, but somehow, those messages fell on deaf ears. Here I am, 40 years later, still trying to learn that it’s okay to just be me; only to discover that the truth was there this whole time, I just couldn’t hear it.

I suppose it made me sad. It made me wish I HAD learned those lessons as I watched the show as a child. How different could my life have turned out if I had learned to believe in myself back then. But I can get lost in the “what if’s” and the “if only’s” of my past and I know that regret over what could have been is useless.

I suppose it also made me grateful. I’m grateful that my 40 year old ears are finally opening and hearing the message that I couldn’t hear before. I’m grateful that there were (and are) people like Fred Rogers who want people to know that they matter.

I know there are reasons why I likely couldn’t hear those messages as a child, but I also know that it doesn’t matter how old we are, we still just want to know that we matter. I think that’s what love, time, attention and listening does for others – it shows them that they matter. I hope I can be a Fred Rogers someday, too.

Looking stupid

I’m sitting here, watching my cursor blink on a blank page waiting for inspiration to come. I have been feeling like I need to write for the last two weeks, but every time I sit down to do it, I just stare at a blank page and don’t know where to start. I feel so overwhelmed that I can’t focus. It’s like there are so many ideas inside of me that want expression, and when I begin to open a gate to let some of them out, they all come rushing up and try to exit at once and it's chaos. So I slam the gate shut and wait for a time when the inspiration will just come and I don’t have to fight it.

That day is not today, but here I am writing anyway. I know that it’s time to open the flood gates and attempt to let out whatever needs to be expressed and hope that I can make sense of it all.

I’ve recently been in a tailspin of depression, self-pity and binge eating; you know, the “same ol’ same ol’.” I can pinpoint the trigger for this particular episode quite distinctly. Someone I trust and admire expressed themselves angrily toward me. It’s no use rehashing the details here, because they’ve apologized and the details don’t matter anyway. The fallout within my own heart is what I’ve been dealing with.

At the time it happened, I felt hurt and betrayed and I blamed myself. Honestly, I had no reason to blame myself, but the fact that the message was directed at me made me think it was my fault. Even now, looking back, I marvel that I could blame myself so quickly and automatically. I’ve spent the better part of the last several years learning that when people do or say hurtful things, it has virtually nothing to do with the “receiver” and everything to do with what’s going on in the mind and heart of the “giver.” I know this. And yet, in that unprotected moment when I helplessly received the unexpected barbs of someone else’s anger, I could not see the other person – all I could see was that I had somehow let this person down; enough that they would “reprimand” me. I knew, without question, that the fault was mine; that I had done something wrong; that I had let this person down; but I could not for the life of me figure out what I had done wrong.

The truth is, I hadn’t done anything wrong – at least nothing that warranted such a strong verbal response. Unfortunately for me, self-pity doesn’t need truth to exist; it can make up its own truth and self-perpetuate. And it did. I felt sorry for myself and I blamed myself for letting down someone I admire. I turned to comfort food because I knew comfort food would make me feel better, even if in just the short-term.

And I ruminated. I couldn’t immediately identify what I had done wrong, so I made things up: “I just don’t measure up;” “I’m not as capable as I thought I was;” “that’s what I get for trying to be confident or feel good about myself;” “I’m just not good enough;” etc. These thoughts never lead to anything positive and this time was no exception. But after pondering this experience for several days, something dawned on me – one of the main reasons I was so hurt by this exchange was because it made me feel stupid. I walked away from this experience believing that “I should have known better…” 

This insight may not sound like such a big deal, but it was immensely profound for me, and I hope I can capture why.

For all of my life I believed I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough to warrant my father’s time and attention and I wasn’t good enough to warrant my mother’s praise or affection. I was fat and I lived in a world where I did not fit in. I wasn’t good enough, cool enough, attractive enough, etc. to have close friendships and I was often getting hurt by the frequent rejection and/or lack of inclusion among my peers. I desperately prayed to be attractive, and athletic, strong, confident, witty, etc. so that my dad would want to spend more time with me; so that my mom would stop criticizing everything about me; so that my friends would actually be friends and want me around instead of just tolerating having me around occasionally.

Through a lifetime of putting myself down I always had two things that I held onto that were positive about me – I was spiritually sensitive and I was smart. I’m not talking Mensa level, genius smart or anything, just regular smarts. At the very least I thought I was “smart enough,” and coming from a guy who didn’t think he was “enough” of anything, that was a big deal.

I suppose it was inevitable that this would become a point of pride for me. I would (well, let’s be honest, I still do…) feel angry or highly defensive whenever anyone doubted or questioned my intelligence – like, really angry. It was if I was saying, “this is all I have going for me, if you take this from me then I have nothing….” And I really believed that. The unexpected problem I encountered was that, in order to maintain my identity as a “smart” man, I had to know everything. I held on to meaningless facts and figures, so that I could whip them out at a moment’s notice and “impress” everyone with my knowledge, aka smarts. The problem came when something came up that I didn’t know anything about, because suddenly, I looked “stupid.”

Without really recognizing it – until recently – I had learned to hold myself accountable for all the things I didn’t know, but SHOULD have known. I could subvert the feeling of “looking stupid,” with good old fashioned “shame.” I would rather beat myself up for what I didn’t know (shame was familiar/comfortable), than accept feeling stupid.

For me, feeling stupid and/or looking stupid in the eyes of others is unbearable. I have nothing else going for me, and to have my intelligence taken away is to strip me of anything worthwhile and I might as well find the highest cliff to drive off because I have nothing and will only ever be nothing. My head knows this is wrong, but my heart is stubborn and doesn’t let go of fears easily.

This was the culprit behind my intense, visceral reaction to being “dressed down” by someone I love – they hit me exactly where I hurt the most – they made me feel stupid and like I should have known better. And I retreated. I turned to comfort food and self-pity because feeling mock care is better than feeling no care at all, right? I avoided going to work because my heart was sick. I stayed in bed for two days straight because all I wanted was to stop existing. I vowed never to get too close to anyone again because people you care about can wound you so deeply. I resigned myself to feeling lonely for the rest of my life, because loneliness is better than getting hurt, right?

No, the problem is not my relationship with this person (By the way, I told them how I felt and they responded in a loving, apologetic way, which I’m grateful for). The problem is my relationship with myself – how I think of myself. I thought I was making so much progress and then in one moment, it seemed shattered; as if I was back to square one, or that I hadn’t made any progress at all.

But I know that’s not true. An emotional setback, yeah, that’s what it feels like, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t made progress. If anything, maybe it just means that I’ve made progress to the point that I’m ready to address this underlying faulty belief, and that this “unpleasant experience” was the catalyst to bring this to my attention. I wish I had handled it better, but I guess I can just add that to my pile of “lessons to learn.” And I think there are nuances here I need to work out. It’s okay to be smart, and not know everything. In other words, being smart doesn’t mean knowing everything. No one can know everything anyway. What I really need to do is to learn how to deal with looking stupid. How do I deal with those moments when my intelligence fails me? How do I deal with those times when I feel like I should have known better and I’m left feeling pretty stupid and bad about myself? Previously, I immediately turned to shame, self-condemnation, comfort food and self-pity, but that’s just not healthy (and, ironically, a pretty “stupid” way to handle it…).

Maybe it’s not really the stupidity that bothers me. Maybe it’s the feeling that I won’t measure up or be deserving of the praise of others – that I’ll never be worth the validation I’ve been craving since a child. Messing up, making mistakes, looking stupid, I mean, maybe it’s all part of the same war I’ve been fighting within my heart my whole life – am I good enough?

I can’t help but wonder, what advice I would give someone who came to me and expressed these things? I think I would want to give that person a big hug and say, “I’m sorry this has been so hard for you. It’s human nature to feel stupid (ashamed/embarrassed) sometimes. When that happens, ask yourself, ‘did you do something wrong that needs to be made right? Try to make it right;’ ‘did you do something that you truly need to apologize for? Go ahead and apologize;’ otherwise, if you didn’t do anything wrong and there’s nothing to apologize for, accept that there was something you didn’t know, but now you do – this may be an uncomfortable way to learn something, but it’s still a learning opportunity. Chalk it up to a learning experience and move on. Don’t waste your time hurting yourself, because – even the you who makes boneheaded decisions from time to time – is still worth being treated with love and respect.”

Saying it is one thing, believing it is another. I guess I still have some work to do.

When learning hurts...

So I had a rough learning experience this week.

A little background to set the scene. I have been experiencing some inconsistent knee pain this last week during certain movements in workouts, like when squatting, or even just everyday activities, like going down stairs, getting in and out of my car, etc. I say inconsistent, because sometimes the pain is there and sometimes it's not - weird, I know. In any event, I met with my trainer for our weekly workout and I let him know about what's been going on. So we began the workout and he had me do some new exercises/movements to help investigate what might be causing that pain.

Pretty close to the end of our workout, and after seeing that there wasn't any one particular movement or position that made a difference - again, pretty inconsistent - he had me do some body weight squats. He showed me the form he wanted me to use and could see after just one try that I was having a hard time. So on the second attempt he stands behind me and brings his leg forward to brace my back as I squat and he instructs me to push my hips back even further. I could only go down so far before losing all strength and feeling that twinge in my knee. In order to compensate for that I leaned forward to maintain my balance, not just in the squat position, but in order to stand back up, which I did.

I realized that being overweight and carrying most of that weight in my belly has pushed my center of gravity forward, such that when I went down to a certain height, I needed to lean forward in order to maintain balance. With him telling me to move my hips backward, it completely threw off my center of gravity and I didn't have the strength to hold myself in that position without feeling like I was falling backwards.

On my third attempt, this time with him insisting that I push my hips back, and even though I felt his leg bracing me, I couldn't do it. I fell. It was only about 4-5 inches, and the physical fall didn't hurt, but what hurt was the emotional toll that short action had on me. Craig (my trainer) walked around and held out his hand to help me stand up and said, "come on, one more time." I took his hand and let him help me up. I was feeling very weak, embarrassed and ashamed of myself. He walked around behind me one more time and told me to try again. I didn't want to do it, but I did. He tells me, "Bring your hips back. I'm here, I've got you." I tried again and really focused on bringing my hips backward into the sitting position. Same result. I could only go so far before my legs completely gave out. I fell again.

"It's okay," I hear Craig's voice behind me as we walks around to face me. He holds out his hand again to help me stand up, but this time I hesitate. I didn't want to take his hand at first; I was too angry - mad at myself. I didn't even want to look at him. I was so ashamed of myself. I was mad at being so fat that I couldn't even hold myself up. I was mad at being so weak that I couldn't even complete the simplest exercise. Then I got mad at myself for everything that had happened to me in my past that led me to this humiliating moment - most especially my own bone-headed decisions. You know, the little ones that you don't think will have any consequences? "Just one little bite won't hurt (which then turns into an entire pie/cake/pizza/etc.); I had a rough week, I can have some ice cream; I'm too tired to exercise, I just really need to rest/relax;" etc.

"Come on," he beckons again. I take his hand and stand up, then bend over forward - out of breath and defeated. As he walks away, while I "recover," he says, "we can stop there for today, but lets do some foam rolling." In that moment, I'm just trying to keep my shit together. I'm flooded with emotions and feeling like a massive failure. As I get my breath back I walk to where he is with the foam roller and he goes through what he wants me to do. I've done some foam rolling before and even though I don't tell him that, I'm glad to be doing something I kind of know how to do. But my mind isn't really on it and when I finish he tells me to just relax and breathe.

But he can see on my face that I'm not okay. "Are you still thinking about what happened back there?" he asks me. "Yes," I said with my head hanging down, "I'm pretty upset about it actually." I proceed to tell him how I'm feeling about myself and that prompted a pretty frank discussion about what I can learn from this experience. I wish I had a tape recorder with me to remember all of the details, but some of the major points he made were these:

I didn't fail today.
He pointed out all of things I WAS able to do - like learn a brand new exercise while keeping great form; being better conditioned in that I could actually talk to him between sets of prowler pushes; even one of the other trainers in the gym let him know that he sees me there working out on my own; etc. He pointed out that struggling with one exercise, while showing improvement in others is still a win.

In that moment I was choosing to feel bad about myself.
(That's always a tough one to hear, but he was right.) I was choosing to focus on the one thing I "failed" at, while not acknowledging all the other things I had done well. I was the one bringing up all my past mistakes and failures and causing myself to drown in regret. Additionally, he pointed out a danger in that, when I do that, I am also projecting my fears into the future, ensuring that I won't change when my focus is only on what I've done (and by extension, will continue to do) wrong. He instructed me to do some meditations to project into my future what my vision for myself is, but then to "come back" to the present and look at what choices I can make today to help lead to that future vision. In essence - have a vision of who I want to be, but focus on today (what I can control), not on the future (what I can't control).

Life is not black and white.
Coming from a highly religious background, I tend to paint most things as black and white - either you're good or you're bad and there is no in-between. But the truth is, there is gray. Humans aren't perfect, there is some good and bad in all of us - all of us make mistakes. Sometimes we make "bad" choices; sometimes we exhibit "bad" behavior. If life were only black and white, there would be no hope for us; but life has shades of gray - that is the training ground that allows us to learn how to make better choices. You can fail at something and not BE a failure - which is a totally foreign concept to a shame-based way of thinking. There is no gray for shame-based people, but that is not how life was designed.

If you have beliefs that are hurting you, then they are garbage and need to be thrown away. YOU CAN CHOOSE NEW BELIEFS. It may sound surprising, but this one is very difficult for me to accept. Again, due to shame-based thinking, wherein labels ARE the thing itself. What I mean is, I come from a past and a way of thinking that says: "if you do something bad you ARE bad. If you make a mistake, you ARE a mistake. If you fail at something you ARE a failure. If you ARE fat then you don't fit in and you ARE unacceptable. You can't be yourself because who you ARE, at your core, is unacceptable." When these beliefs are adopted at a young age they feel permanent - as if set in stone and unalterable. In my case, I know that these beliefs were instilled by the time I was six. And when I say instilled, I mean that by this age these beliefs were so ingrained that they were automatic. I had fully accepted their reality - this is who I am. There has never, ever been a time in my life when I didn't know that I was a failure, or a mistake, from the beginning. This is my foundation. Even though it's wrong, it's the only foundation I've known, so the prospect of removing my foundation is terrifying.

But what is the result? I have built a house on my crooked foundation that has resulted in unnecessary pain, an "ugly" house that is fat and un-athletic and lives in misery and sadness. The windows only see and reflect pain, sadness, and loneliness. A house of misery. What I am going through in attempting to improve my fitness is the equivalent of trying to tear down and rebuild my house, but in the process realizing that my house was poorly constructed because the foundation was misshapen and uneven to begin with. Which means, basically, that I need to gut the foundation and start over. I need to throw away the beliefs that are hurting me and choose new ones. Insightful imagery aside, this is much harder to do than it sounds. Hmm... harder to do, but not impossible...

This is why learning hurts. It reaches to the core of who I am. It forces me to examine the beliefs, experiences and circumstances that have been a part of me, seemingly from the beginning - and many of them, as I begin to shine a light on them, are dark, disgusting and terrifying (okay, not ALL of them, there are some good things in there too!). When I see the "bad" things I regret them or feel ashamed of them and the cycle continues. But the cycle CAN be broken. Actually thy cycle MUST be broken in order to progress.

The irony is not lost on me - the only way to progress is to fail. I need failures - I need to experience failing AND STILL BEING OKAY. I need to learn that I can fall on my ass a few times and "fail" at something, i.e., discover a limitation, AND STILL BE OKAY. In order to change my beliefs it will take deciding to believe different and then experiencing believing different and that isn't going to happen overnight, because experience takes time. And that's how it's supposed to be.

So how would you finish the phrase: "When learning hurts..."?

Here's how I think I would finish it: When learning hurts, be grateful. It means that what you're learning is significant and it's helping you become what you were meant to be.