It was the school holidays. Joash sent an SMS to his classmate, Jean, who he was attracted to, asking her if she would be interested in going out for dinner that weekend. In fact, Jean was fond of Joash too but her shyness would always ensure that her feelings for him were well hidden. However, when Jean received Joash's SMS, her grandma had just passed away. Jean was in a state of devastation because she was very close to her grandma who took care of her when she was a young child, and Jean did not reply Joash's SMS.
Joash waited in eager anticipation for Jean's reply as if his whole life's happiness hung upon her yes or no. But as time went by, her silence began to convince him that it was a no, and that Jean did not feel the same way for him as he did for her. Joash felt disappointed, depressed and rejected. He felt unloved, unaccepted... and began to form judgements of himself in his mind to explain this rejection. He thought "It must be that I'm not good enough... Not good-looking enough perhaps..." As he formed more of such deductions, he became convinced that he must be unloveable.
Jean took the holidays to grieve over her loss and thought of meeting Joash in school to share with him what had happened over the holidays. But when the new school term started, Joash did not want to appear dejected in front of Jean. He wanted to look as if he was unaffected by her rejection. And so he put on a smile in school and started acting particularly friendly and excited with another female classmate. Jean saw this and thought that Joash was fond of the other girl and so she distanced herself from him.
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What happened to Joash in this story is something that runs common in everyone's lives in different contexts. Here is the flow...
EXPERIENCE ----> FEELINGS ----> SELF-JUDGEMENTS ----> REACTIONS
We experience something happening to us and it creates feelings in us about what has happened. These feelings may be positive or negative but they are neither right or wrong. Feelings are just the reality of how our experiences make us feel. And these enter into our hearts.
However, these feelings actually do not cause us hurt. They cause us pain. The difference between pain and hurt that we often overlook is that pain is a feeling while hurt is the reduction of one's dignity / worthiness as a person. Our hearts can handle pain, which will dissipate and disappear after some time. But our hearts cannot handle hurt because hurt is caused by and lives in our minds and will only 'go away' when our minds change its way of perceiving ourselves.
Joash in this story felt rejected, unloved, etc. These are feelings. But what did he allow those feelings to create in his mind? He began making conclusions about who he is as a person. He began to think that he is unloveable, ugly, unattractive, etc. These were the judgements he started to make about himself that we know are not true but Joash did not know how Jean felt. And when he made those judgements, he was hurting himself because he was reducing the amount of worth he saw in himself. He began to see himself as lesser.
And then what did Joash do next?
He put up a front and pretended to like someone else. He tried to cover up the rejection. He started to cover up his unworthiness, his feelings, so that the one he loved would not see that he is weak and imperfect, and think of him even lesser than he thought she did. His actions became the reactions from his judgements about himself.
And these reactions blocked life. It blocked life because...
1. It prevented Joash from touching the reality of his feelings and making choices to address those feelings, which then led him to form untrue negative conclusions about himself.
2. It prevented Joash from being open to a good conversation with Jean that could lead into a good and happy relationship.
3. It would have sent the wrong signal to the other classmate Joash was pretending to take an interest in, and land him up in future complications with that girl. She might eventually get hurt too.
And the more we judge ourselves and react out of those judgements, the more we will stumble in our subsequent life experiences and deepen those judgements, bringing us further and further away from the one judgement that God has made of us - That we are His image and likeness (which I hope to write more about later).
But first...
How has this process of EXPERIENCE ----> FEELINGS ----> JUDGEMENTS been real in our lives too?
Recall a significant experience that happened to you and notice what feelings it created in you. And as a result of those feelings, how do you see yourself? Just a word... "I see myself as ____."
Just become aware. The first step.
Adapted from the Workshop: Living from the inner springs of life - The interplay of the Two Standards in our Life by Fr. Cecil Azzopardi, SJ @ the Ignatian Conference, Hong Kong 2014
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