Pushing Boundaries and Pulling Teeth

My daughter has this loose tooth in her mouth right now that is literally hanging on by a thread. The tiny white power plug in her gum line is essentially not plugged in, but it's also not budging. It's as stubborn as the vessel that holds it. It tips, it teeters, it even spins in perfect pointe work like a ballerina. My solution to this is YANK THAT THING OUT. Her solution to this is ... it's not a problem, so no solution necessary. She defiantly says all of this, of course, while a tooth bops along her bottom lip like a buoy. As infuriating as it is, she's right. Once again, the young Jedi has put me in my place; my little soothsayer - "toothsayer!"

There's a book I mentioned in a previous blog, The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, about how we are living in such a fast-paced culture of convenience that this generation is starting to have unrealistic expectations of instant comfort and a low tolerance for any sort of discomfort. Which impacts our overall stamina when we feel challenged. Over time it affects our sense of accomplishment and feeling truly challenged and complete.

I agree that if you have too many readily available comforts, it changes your threshold for what "hard" is. I can see it in people's overall patience. I am guilty of this too. When I see a problem, or my daughter has the smallest moment of pain, everything in my body wants to race to solve it. Because most of the time we CAN. We need something immediately but don't have time to get it, so we get it instantly delivered. We don't know the answer to something, we have a device at our fingertips that will give us the answer in less than 15 seconds.

I find the best cure for this type of impatience is life's natural bloopers. My blooper comes in the form of a tiny force majeure, my 7-year-old daughter. I always say that my confident child with the loose lips, (and even looser tooth), really tests my patience. I don't mean it in a fist shaking in the air way; it's really coming from a place of surrender. A place of reluctant appreciation within frustration. Whenever I want to grab the scissors and do it for her so I don't have to watch her struggle and possibly get hurt, she reminds me, "Nope. I want to do it myself." Then there are moments when I watch from inside my house (hiding) as she approaches a neighbor about their dog, how they "definitely pooped in our yard" and didn't pick it up. I wanted to run and apologize for her and protect her from the uncomfortable situation. When to her, it's fine. That was just talking to the neighbor. That scary fall on the skateboard ramp, you know, when the back of her head hit the ramp as the helmet flew forward, I was ready to scoop her and her board up and never go back to a skatepark ever again. When for her, it was just another fall. She ate a banana, tightened her helmet, and was right back on the ramps. She can take a simple, even pleasant moment, and very quickly turn it into a complicated situation. On a beautiful drive home from school, she rolled down her window and yelled at a stranger walking their dog, "Thanks for NOTHING!" According to her, they weren't doing anything, so she wanted to thank them for it.

.

The other day she wanted to make a salad for dinner. Sure, sounds simple. I found myself at every corner offering her a shortcut, but no. She was going to do it her way and at her pace. She wrote down every ingredient she'd need, spelled out perfectly incorrectly. So she would start over again... and again... and again until it was all spelled properly. This... took... time. So by the time we got to the Farmer's Market, it was closing. I told her we should just go to a regular store "...it'll be faster."

"No mama, we can get them all here."

She proceeded to go to each vendor (who were sending all the signals they were closing and packing up) and she gave them her handwritten list to help her find every little ingredient. If they didn't have it, we walked (not quickly) to the next booth that was also packing up. She showed them her list and took her time taking up their time. Now I'm so stressed, worried she's testing everyone's patience. When to her it's just shopping, her way at her pace.

That's just collecting the ingredients! She still has a salad to make. Again, I come up with shortcuts; I accidentally precut the tomatoes she wanted to chop. I had to let her do it her way, her pace... look the other way. So what if she wanted to zest a basil leaf!?

This isn't about that strong-willed daughter of mine. It's what she represents. She symbolizes chaos. She symbolizes discomfort. She symbolizes confrontation. She symbolizes the speed bumps in the race we put ourselves in. She challenges my need to control, fix, and quickly mend every situation. I stumbled on this quote recently, "If your peace depends on everything going right, that's not peace, that's control. Learning to be steady in uncertainty - that's real growth." One of those very well-articulated Instagram memes against a serene nature backdrop. Just as well articulated is my daughter's version of this, "How can I not be argumentative? It's so difficult! And fights teach you things."

This week we're going to purposefully test our patience and find steadiness in uncertainty. Do the slightly uncomfortable thing. Move more manually and less automatically. I'll tell you why, it's not because I want us all to be uncomfortable. I want us to be forced to slow down enough to discover what we're capable of. Where we discover we can make a little room in our snug comfort zones. Realize that our discomforts might have been falsely labeled. You might not have given yourself, and your definition of discomfort, a chance to prove itself otherwise. Instead of fixing that problem, being too quick to come out of muscle fatigue, fill that empty pause in a conversation, protect your family from every uncomfortable situation, or pull that tooth... let it sit there. More often than not, you will be pleasantly surprised with how things turn out. If anything, you'll learn that uncomfortable feeling wasn't THAT bad - and THAT'S growth.

Plus ... "fights teach you things."

Once again, my favorite Irish writer posts a poem that is completely in step with this week's rant and rave.

Drag Yourself through

Scrape your Knees, Elbows, Shins if you have to

Tear your clothes, rip your skin open, shed hair, pick up scars

Decorate your body in everything it means to be here

To be alive

The beauty of a thing lies in imperfection

How gorgeous the symmetry of the thing like that is

Blemish yourself into something unforgettable

stumble, trip, crawl

Stagger your way into life

Be alive in it

Cuts bruises and all

Be alive in your life

Be alive in your life

~ Daragh Fleming

Excited to make your bodies sweat, smile, and feel alive in life's discomforts.

XO,

Celeste