We Are the Sum of Our Experiences

Posted on by stilllearning2b

As I mentioned recently, I’m in the early stages of making a major change in my life. This early stage of not-knowing is uncomfortable and so my inclination is to quickly make a decision so that I can disguise my anxiety about the uncertainty as busyness towards the goal.

To help fight that tendency, I’m setting goals for each of the next few months that force me to stay in this open-and-curious and also scared-shitless stage. My goal for January (which I actually started a few weeks ago) was to listen – to myself and to others.

And it’s been eye-opening. First, I’ve had to be very careful with myself as my discomfort with not-knowing has made me prone to all-too-quickly agreeing with the confident wisdom contributed by others.

Secondly, I’ve had to become very cognizant of the filters that the offered wisdom has percolated through before it has reached my eyes or ears.

When it comes to life, we are what we have experienced. This results in the following truisms that become important when we relate to other people:

 

  1. Other people’s experiences do not mirror your own.

  2. Everybody responds from their own experiences.

  3. Somebody else’s experience does not invalidate your own.

Other people’s experiences do not mirror your own.

At some point, all of us have sat through a 6th grade math class. Yet, if I asked each of you to reflect on that class, what it made you feel like and what role it has played in your life, I would receive thousands of different responses.

Were you confident in math or was it a subject that always made you feel like you were lacking? Or, did you excel in elementary school and started to have doubts about your ability creep in during 6th grade? Was your teacher encouraging or a bully? Were you at a new school or surrounded by lifelong friends? Was school a respite from a horrible home life or a place that filled you with dread?

 

Everybody responds from their own experiences.

Think about how that experience will shape your mindset as you prepare to meet your own child’s 6th grade math teacher. Even though your kid may be very different than you were at that age, your experiences are going to impact what advice and feedback you deliver to them. Some of that advice may me pertinent to your child and the situation at hand, and other suggestions may be misinformed because they are a response to your experiences, not your child’s. Yet no matter how much you try to relate to your child only from the present, you cannot erase your own experience. In a very real way, it’s what you know.

 

Somebody else’s experience does not invalidate your own.

Even in a school reunion, where everybody is reflecting on the same teacher and the same class, each person will remember something slightly different. One may recall the taunting afternoon sunlight that always distracted them from the instruction while another student, who sat out of view of the window, has no recollection of the time of day the class was held. One may recount the joy of being challenged by the Problem Of the Week while another remembers those same problems as a source of anxiety and dis-inspiration. Just as one former student shouts out, “She was the best teacher ever!” another announces, “That teacher made me think I was stupid.”

And all of those experiences are simultaneously correct. Just because one student hated the class, does not mean that the teacher was ineffective. That class may have been a turning point for one student and a completely forgettable class for another. One person’s experience has no bearing on another’s.

 

Experiences depend upon two characteristics: perspective and connections.

 

Perspective

Even when we share an experience with others, we all have our own perspective of the event. The perspective is formed based on our relationship to the experience.

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Connections

No experience exists in isolation. We are not blank slates; we come into every experience with our past – even our distant past – setting up certain expectations. Whatever is occurring concurrent with the experience will inevitably alter its greater meaning. Even what happens after can change an experience as you re-evaluate in light of new information.

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So what does this mean?

  • Don’t expect that other people are experiencing the same thing you are even if the external situation is the same.

 

  • Avoid assuming that your experience is identical to theirs and expecting that what worked for you will automatically work for them. We all have different perspectives and assign different meaning to experiences.

 

  • When you feel misunderstood, take a moment and remember that they are responding from their experience. It’s not a matter of them not wanting to understand you; it’s a matter of a different frame of reference.

 

  • Listening is perhaps the biggest gift we can give another.

 

  • Empathy is important in relating to others, yet it also has its limitations. We can imagine what something is like, but it’s important to know that the imagined is not the same as the reality.

 

  • We tend to feel defensive when we feel like somebody’s experience is threatening our own. Remember that both experiences can be true at the same time.

 

  • Be careful with the stories you tell yourself around your experiences. Going back to the 6th grade math class, a student that struggled could hold on to the belief that they’re dumb and bad at math or they could choose to see that as an assumption to be challenged and work to prove it wrong.

 

  • We learn from others, even – maybe especially – when their experiences are different than our own.

Ten Life Events That Can Trigger Unexpected Grief

Posted on by stilllearning2b

On Friday we said goodbye to a dear friend of my husband’s. The grief was thick in the air as we shared stories and perused old photos. (An aside – I think listening to the eulogy my husband delivered is the proudest I’ve ever been of him!) None of us were surprised by the heartache, this man’s life impacted many and his his death leaves a void.

Later that day, I did some maintenance work on my school website. I found myself caught off guard by a sense of loss when I encountered the roster from last year’s eighth graders, who have now moved on to the high school. There is no tragedy in this situation; children are expected to move on. Yet even though my rational mind understand this, my heart still grieves a little for these individuals that will no longer fill my classroom.

We expect to mourn the major losses in life: death, divorce and estrangement. Yet grief isn’t limited to the obvious. In fact, any time there is loss (or simply the feeling of loss), there is grief. Here are ten common life situations that can lead to unexpected grief:

 

Having a Child

From the moment a child is born, the parents begin the process of letting go. Some experience a yearning for the freedoms that life offered prior to children, grieving the loss of the life they had even as they feel overwhelmed with love for their offspring. Others struggle with accepting the child they have and grieve for the child they dreamed would be theirs. For all parents, the completion of one stage and the advancement to another is bittersweet, both a time of letting go and a time of celebration. And of course, at some point, the child is no longer a child. “Empty nest syndrome” is simply a culturally-approved way of describing the grief that accompanies the launching of children.

Graduation

Look at the faces at any graduation and you’ll observe a mixture of excitement for the attainment of a goal, fear of the next step and grieving for the completion of an era. Graduation signals the end of the identify as “student.” There may be other, related, losses if a move soon follows graduation. Finally, for many, graduation serves as a benchmark for the end of childhood, prompting a grieving process for the end of a life stage.

 

Marriage

Much like with the birth of a child, marriage may signal the end of a certain lifestyle. Even when the change is welcomed, there may be some sadness for the life that was traded in. In addition, some find that by choosing one person, they grieve the loss of the potential of choosing others.

 

Moving

The most obvious loss that accompanies moving is the lack of access to friends and/or family. Other casualties are not so apparent. You may find that you grieve for the way the light used to shine into your former kitchen or that you’re still aching for your old neighborhood coffeeshop. This sadness over the change often leads to a feeling that the move was a mistake.

 

Aging

Bodies break down. And as they lose efficiency and display more wear and tear, it’s easy to grieve for the younger – and more resilient – self. It’s funny, most of us are self-critical about our bodies, especially when we are young. And then we look back at old photographs and wonder how we could have ever disparaged that youthful and healthy body. Aging-related grief may be over form or function as both looks and health tend to decline.

 

Fertility Struggles

I am happy to see the attention that this is now receiving. Couples that struggle with fertility are in an endless cycle of hope and despair, grieving for the pregnancies that don’t occur or the ones that end in miscarriage or stillbirth. Additionally, there is mourning for the lack of “normal” fertility as they observe others bear children without any obvious issues.

 

Health-Related Changes

I had to go gluten free over eleven years ago. And I grieved over bread, tears and everything. Health problems often dictate lifestyle changes, whether it be giving up a type of food or staying away from certain activities. These changes can be more difficult than anticipated. When you’re told you can no longer do something, you mourn for the time when you faced no such restrictions.

 

Retirement

Like graduation, retirement also signals a shift in your identity. Additionally, it is often closing out one life stage (adulthood) and entering another (AARP mailer recipient). This is a common time for people to grieve the life choices they made (or didn’t make) because they begin to realize that time is limited.

 

Eliminating Material Items

Even for the non-hoarders, material items often carry emotional weight. As such, when we take a load to Goodwill or hold a garage sale, there is often an ache that accompanies the release of the items. These things have been allowed to symbolize a person or a particular moment in time. And so by relinquishing the items, we are allowing ourselves to let go.

 

Making Decisions

If you opt for Choice A, you have eliminated the possibility of selecting Option B. And that’s how life often works – we make a series of decisions, each one eliminating the possibility of deciding to take a different path. And sometimes, we become overwhelmed with all of the roads not taken and we grieve for the imagined possibilities that are left unexplored.

 

 

Loss and therefore, grief, are a normal part of life. It’s okay to mourn what you no longer have. Just keep in mind that grieving is not meant to be a full-time job. Learn how to live while you weep, find gratitude while you grieve and move forward even as you honor what was.