I had what you might call a breakthough moment at grad school this past weekend. I feel it’s a lesson I knew rationally but had not internalized until having to face it and put words to it in front of my classmates.
I thought the lesson was as simple as I don’t feel I’ve learned something if I can’t show it on a test. I was still frustrated by the professor and her approach to the class. I wanted to explore the text book concepts and walk away more equipped to quote theory and apply models discussed within it. At the end of day 2 she made us take 15 minutes to go someplace by ourselves on campus and just reflect. I couldn’t even do that well. I ended up texting Gentleman Friend during this time. I was talking about what I was thinking, but I’m bad at self reflection. This is when I came up with I like to demonstrate mastery with a test.
This is not the breakthrough. I thought it was. It’s not.
I’m stubborn. Also, not the breakthrough. But for the first time I realized that my stubbornness is not always persistance. I pride myself on being persistent. I think that’s a good trait. Turns out, the other side of that coin is stubborn.
After the 15 minute reflection/text a boy period is over we had to go back and do a verbal discussion board. A classmate asked the professor if instead of us posting our essay like residency weekend wrap ups online to do them verbally in a peace circle. I take a while to warm up. I wasn’t quite ready to bear my soul. I thought I’d keep it top line and talk about vision and asking the next question, which is some thing I admire in my classmate Doug. He’s good at calmly asking the next question after I think a task is already completed. Then the peace train begins and there’s opening up and there’s crying and sharing and oh dear. I compromised. I did not cry. Quite frankly, I don’t think I had any thought that deep, but I did reveal a more personal level of awareness. My peace circle monologue went like this:
We’ve talked a lot about emotional hijacking within the classroom during an activity that has made us frustrated. I enter the classroom emotionally hijacked. It’s no secret to anyone that has been sitting around me the last two residency weekends that what I wanted out of the class is not what you (looking at Jane the professor) are going to give me. I wanted concepts and models from the book to become a more well spoken subject matter expert. I got divorced a couple of years ago which is tragedy all it’s own, but I took part in some destructive hobbies during that time and I had a friend say to me, “Those activities are a distraction, not the solution.” I’ll never forget that and I am applying it to what’s happening here now. Wanting the ‘book learning’ so bad might be the distraction I want so I don’t have to focus on the self awarness/behavior profile/personality assessment malarkey that you want us to focus on. I can’t take a test on that stuff. Wanting to is the distraction, and I need to spend time understanding my values and who I am to be a better OD practitioner – that is the solution.”
I was feeling good. I thought I had a real ray of light creep into my brain. But I wasn’t done being self aware yet. I said it even more eloquently, more concise and perhaps more drilled down to the core during our wrap up Sunday afternoon.
“It’s no surprise by now I’m the one who wanted to get the book stuff out of this class. I’ve learned that sometimes I can be so focused on wanting X, and so mad and closed off when I don’t get it, that I can’t accept what the other person is offering – which could be the rest of the alphabet.”
This was the breakthrough.
I get mad when I don’t get what I want and how I want it. Which makes me bratty. I know. I never thought of it that way. I thought if people knew me and ‘got’ me they would know what to do for me and how to do it. And this has created a void – what have I been missing that’s been put out there for me??
Immediately the story of how my ex husband proposed comes to mind. I am a girl who likes special plans. I like romance and I want to know there was thought and planning put into special occasions. I always thought I’d have a grand gesture proposal. Even if it was ring in the champagne flute at a favorite restaurant. My ex husband proposed one evening after coming home from work on a random Thursday. I had brought the mail into our bedroom and started reading some of it wearing my blouse and pearl necklace from work that day, but not my pants. I had already taken those off and hung them up (or thrown them on a chair, which is far more likely). I’m sitting on the bed, wearing boring white cotton underwear and a black shirt and chunky pearls when he starts rambling on about something. And I catch on that it’s important after a minute. And a minute later I think he’s bought me a watch because I told him that was a really special present my dad always got my mom and I would like one from him as a token of our relationship being very important to him one day. And then a box much smaller than a watch box is produced and there’s a lovely diamond ring inside.
But I’m a brat. And what I would come to remember most about this day is that there was no grand gesture. That there was no sapphires on my ring like I wanted. That I was wearing gross old white cotton underwear and reading the mail. What I could never see until right now is that there was a man who couldn’t wait another minute to ask me to marry him. That he didn’t need a big gesture because he loved me that was big enough. I clung to being grumpy about my lack of special engagement for a long time. What a silly, stupid girl I was. I was being offered so much more in that moment and it could have been such a sweet tale. I ruined it. I can be so narrow minded. I’m just so sorry about this now.
This was a life lesson kind of weekend. It was the kind of lesson that will make me a better person going forward. It’s the beginning of wisdom and a sliver of grace. I just wonder what I missed because I was focused on something so small. Here’s my promise to the universe: I’m ready to accept what comes my way. Whatever it may be, and however ordinary it may seem.
