DREEM or DREAM?
Honoring Your So-called Failures
This post is about honoring YOU, even when YOU get it wrong.
It is about finding the right in your wrong, the beauty in your trying.
Zuri’s Story
Aunt Jasmine and Zuri were sitting at the kitchen table. Jasmine
was in one of her nostalgic moods, Zuri could tell. Jasmine told an old story
about Sherece, Zuri’s mom and her (Jamsine) when they were teenagers. As
Jasmine talked, she just laughed-- her eyes a bit distant as if they could see
some far off place or time. Zuri loved to watch Jasmine when she talked like
this. She knew that Jasmine and her mom had a hard time growing up. Still, she
also knew that her mom and her aunt had lots of good, really good times.
Aunt Jasmine looked at Zuri pensively. She said, “Zuri, you’ve
always been such a serious little girl, always trying to get everything right, always
trying to make everything perfect.”
Shy to be seen like this, Zuri cast her eyes down and shook
her head “No.”
“Yes little one,” Jasmine said. “I remember a time, years
ago, Lord-- you must have been three or four years old. You wanted me to help
you write a story. I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think kids at your age
even knew the alphabet, let alone writing, and a writing a story at that. Still,
I told you I’d help you write. So, you sat there coloring and writing. Do you
remember that?”
Zuri shook her head, “No Auntie, no I don’t. I wish I did.”
Jasmine explained, “Well, there you were sitting there
working so hard. You stopped and asked me, ‘Auntie Jazz, how do you spell
dream?’ I told you really slowly, ‘D-R-E-A-M, dream.’ You looked up at me, your
eyes wide open like you had done something wrong…. do you remember that?”
Zuri shook her head again, “No, I can’t remember.”
“Well, there you were-- sad, sad because you wrote it wrong. I
couldn’t see your paper. You started to scribble all over the word you wrote as
hard as you could. I grabbed your hand and said, ‘Wait, what are you doing to
your little story?’ You told me you got it wrong. You told me you spelled it,
‘D-R-E-E-M.’ You said it was ruined-- the whole thing.”
“I stopped you right there and took a sheet of paper and
showed you DREAM and DREEM. I showed you both. I told you about what I learned
in school, “When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking. /e/
first then the two vowels together make the long /e/ sound.’ I showed you how the Ds,
the Rs, the Es, and the Ms were all the same. I showed you how you had the word
almost all right.”
Zuri had a feeling she remembered that day.
Jasmine said, “You sad to me ‘From here’ and you pointed to
the DREEM, ‘getting to DREAM will be easy.’”
Jasmine and Zuri smiled an I-love-you smile at each
other.
Jasmine said, “That’s right. Your mistakes are just ladders
to the stars honey. You keep your heart open and do your work and you will get
to that dream—no matter how you spell it.” They both laughed.
Right then it came to her. Zuri remembered the story she was
writing. It was a story of a little girl whose dream it was to build a giant
ladder to a wishing star. When she got there, she was going to wish her mom the
best job in the world, a fancy new car, a really nice man to take her out, and
all of the groceries they could ever eat.
Zuri thought about it. DREEM or DREAM it didn’t matter. It
was little girl trying to make it right and Jasmine was able to see.
Zuri remembered something she read in one of my journals in The
Yoga Bag. She remembered the Four Immeasurables: Loving-kindness, Joy,
Compassion, and Equanimity. As she thought of her little self and her Aunt
Jasmine, she thought of compassion.
According to Wallace (2010- link below), compassion “implies caring
tremendously about the suffering of others, as if it were one’s own (p.127). Zuri knew that Aunt Jasmine felt deep compassion for her.
She remembered something else in The Yoga Bag-
Self-Compassion http://www.self-compassion.org
“Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards
yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you
don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff
upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right
now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment? Instead of mercilessly
judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings,
self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with
personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect?
You may try to change in ways that allow you to be more
healthy and happy, but this is done because you care about yourself, not
because you are worthless or unacceptable as you are. Perhaps most importantly,
having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness.
Things will not always go the way you want them to. You
will encounter frustrations, losses will occur, you will make mistakes, bump up
against your limitations, fall short of your ideals. This is the human
condition, a reality shared by all of us. The more you open your heart to this
reality instead of constantly fighting against it, the more you will be able to
feel compassion for yourself and all your fellow humans in the experience of
life. http://www.self-compassion.org/what-is-self-compassion/definition-of-self-compassion.html”
Zuri realized that by showing compassion for her, Aunt Jasmine
was actually teaching Zuri self-compassion. She was learning how to love
herself even when she wasn’t perfect, even when she couldn’t build a ladder to
the stars and save her mom—even then.
As she left her thoughts and came back to her time with Jasmine,
she said, “I love you Auntie Jasmine.”
Jasmine said, “I love you too.”
The Process
This story actually happened years ago only the little girl was
Chloe, my 16-year-old daughter and Jasmine was me. Chloe tried to obliterate
her attempt at writing DREAM when she was only one letter off. As Jasmine told
Zuri, I told Chloe how close she was to getting it right.
When we obliterate our so-called failures, we lose a chance
to learn from them. We lose the chance to allow the effort to get us closer to
where we are headed. In this case, Chloe and Zuri need only replace one letter
to get it right. Why obliterate and start new?
Look your so-called failures deep in the eye. Straight on.
See where you got it right. With compassion, acknowledge your slips in judgments,
lapses in knowledge, quirks in the process, and then honor all you got right.
From that place right there, try again.
Those mistakes, they are your ladders to the stars. Climb on
and with a big huge bundle of self-compassion—try again.
Here is to informed do-overs and next tries!
Namaste,
Catherine
The Yoga Bag
