life is created from death and decay, pain and suffering, every bit as much as from love
I was talking to my daughter the other day about relationships. Marriage in particular. In the conversation we were talking about how marriage, maybe more than any other relationship we have, is the one that holds a mirror up to us. It shows us who we are and what we are made of. It exposes our ego and attachments in ways that nothing else ever does. It forces us to ask the really, really hard questions of ourselves and of life
If we let it.
That’s why it’s so hard. That’s why it’s transformational. That’s why it’s so sacred.
I used to define sacred in terms of something pure, so for marriage to be sacred it had to be pure and undefiled.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to feel that everything is sacred and that there is no clear dividing line between pure and impure, sacred and secular, clean and unclean.
Perhaps I could say that the sacred is that which brings forth life. And life is created from death and decay, pain and suffering, every bit as much as from love. It is sacred that death can be transformed into life in this way.
In relationships, we can fake it with people we don’t live with. We can fake it with our kids. We can fake it with our co-workers. We can even fake it with ourselves.
But it’s pretty hard to fake it for any real length of time with our spouse.
Sooner or later, the truth will out and likely as not, our spouse will react in that transformational, mirror-mirror-on-the-wall way that we all hate so much. Pointing out to us what we are doing, provoking the very ugliest parts of us to burst forth, pulling out our deepest fears of abandonment and rejection. It feels awful. It can feel like a death of sorts.
So, we avoid showing up with real truth and inviting real truth in relationships with the “if I don’t say anything, maybe he/she won’t say anything either” game. We shut down those we are relationships with by blaming them and making our feelings and unhappinesses their fault. We spray flat, black paint on the mirror, or we avoid relationships altogether.
Transformation only occurs when something dies and something new is reborn and death isn’t easy. Most of us fight against it with everything we have. Most of us let go of our agendas in life kicking and screaming when life rips them out of our death grip. Maybe that’s why they call it a death grip. We are fighting with all our strength against the death of something.
Funny thing is, when we do let go, something new is reborn.
And that’s sacred.
To comment, click on the header of this post “Mirror Mirror”