The Friction that Shaves off the Worn and Tired
how trauma can shadow our life and a step toward transforming it
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“Life is sometimes hard. There are challenges. There are difficulties. There is pain. As a younger man, I sought to avoid pain and difficulty and only caused myself more of the same. These days, I choose to face life head-on—and I have become a comet. I arc across the sky of my life, and the hard times are the friction that shaves off the worn and tired bits. The more I travel head-on, the more I am shaped, and the things that no longer work or are unnecessary drop away. It’s a good way to travel. I believe eventually I will wear away all the resistance, until all that’s left of me is light.”
—Richard Wagamese
I'm leaving for Italy excited and curious about what I will see, taste and feel. I haven't traveled for quite some time, and as I push the groaning door of the world, I feel that tingling edge of the unknown sparking in the thread of my gut, that almost indistinguishable feeling between excitement and fear. However, I cannot go before first feeling some old, familiar trauma.
Trauma has a way of lingering within us, buried beneath the surface until the earth tilts on its axis and the waters shift, revealing it like an ancient tree, with its crown of leaves still standing like a monument in the core of me. Trauma is that way. We live, one part aware and another in blissful unawareness, yet time always brings it back to us, like a wave breaking on the surface of the shoreline. The tide withdraws and reveals the concealed— the moon snails and the litter of broken clam shells—the hidden carnage. One day you are at peace, smiling as you fold laundry, and the next, you wake sore in every joint, and your eyes sealed by a crust. These last few weeks have been an encounter with resistance and inflexibility, as old as time, my unwillingness to accept where my life is taking me, making me poignantly aware of my ongoing patterns of holding things painfully. Another form of spring cleaning, you could say.
To clarify, I have been moving forward, being brave, and living on the edge of my discomfort, challenging the small box. But on another, more subtle layer, I have been negotiating terms and fitfully, almost resentfully, begrudgingly doing so. The gears are grinding. There is no oil or give-in between the joints, causing friction and inflammation.
I saw the traumatized part of me coming from around the corner this time, and instead of it rudely taking my hand, I offered it freely. I saw the “I can’t” coming out of my throat. I felt the fear seeping into my every thought, and I went lightly into its arrival. It pointed me, as it so fastidiously does to all the stuck points at odds with its life. It showed me how I'm resisting the flow and current and asked me, in its backward way, to look at the fist I have unknowingly held. "Your hand is dying. Let me pry it open," it said. "Be patient. This opening may take some time." To which I replied, "I see you. I notice you, and I open my hand to receive you. I greet your surge and let your fear and worries sweep the chambers of my heart clean. I understand this is your way of teaching, so I let you do your work through me, knowing well that you come to instruct release."