Axe and Tree

The axe soon forgets, but the tree always remembers

I think about all the times I have been insulted, had my feelings hurt, or have been completely astonished by anger and cruelty. My reactions were emotional, certainly, but the physical response was just as traumatic, if not more so.

I am sure I am not alone when I describe feelings of nausea, headache, muscle tension – sometimes just in the neck or jaw and sometimes so intense I felt as if my entire body was enfolding in the smallest ball it could make, small enough to hide from more blows, tight enough to withstand any outside negative force.

I can still hear, some fifty years later, the words of a neighborhood girl. She was exotic, dark and beautiful, far more worldly and mature than I; I admired her from a distance. She was the most accomplished person in our scout troup and the most talented person in our school. I thought it would be wonderful to get to know her, so I summoned up the courage to say HI one day while out walking. My innocent and friendly HI was met with words, which still sting today, “Yeah, HI fat ass!” followed by cackles of laughter from her and her brothers. Those words still can illicit the same gut pang as they did years and years ago.

I still hear, four years after my divorce, the criticisms and nastiness encountered daily from a man who claimed to love me. He called me the love of his life and his ‘be all end all’. Yet he picked and picked and yelled and criticized everything I did for almost twenty years. Thinking myself unworthy, I believed that he loved me and was grateful but also took each criticsim and negative comment seriously and tried to please him. That voice is fading more and more each day so I rarely hear it anymore but where loving and kindness should have prevailed, rude and spiteful behavior reigned.

As a teacher, I found the students who were the most difficult to manage were those whose parents or classmates had subjected them to extreme badgering and bullying filled with hostile, foul and obscene comments. Their entire beings were, seemingly, constantly subjected to the daily beat-down, the sucking away of their spirit and their humanity. All that was left was anger and a need to expel that anger, usually by a punch or a kick or loud comment or crude remark. Disciplinary action was, unfortunately, just a self-fulfilling prophecy as they came to believe every bit of it was deserved. They believed everything they had been told by people who should have nurtured them and lifted them up.

How many times have I said something in anger or frustration only to regret it the instant it has left my lips? Regret is fine as is apology but neither removes or mitigates any damage that may have been done. It is difficult to hold my tongue as I live in a world that causes me no end of frustration and anger BUT there is no reason for me to stoop to the level of those who cause that frustration and anger. By responding in kind, I perpetuate evil and cause harm. That is not what my life should be about.

Knowing that I have put anger out into the universe causes me sorrow and pain so I endeavor, each day, to breathe, to understand the perspective of the ‘other’ and to think that, failing all else, I do not have to absorb the difficulties of the world around me. I can deflect, I can transcend, I can soothe rather than destroy.

I WILL NOT BE AN AXE BUT WILL STRIVE TO BE A FEATHER.

THE FEATHER SIGNIFIES HONOR AND A CONNECTION WITH THE CREATOR.

IT SYMBOLIZES TRUST, STRENGTH, WISDOM, POWER AND FREEDOM.