During the six months of renovation before we moved into our new home, we developed a very good relationship with our builder, Slavo. It turns out that he is not only a very skilled craftsman, plumber, electrician and carpenter, but also something of a Zen master.
About a year after we had moved in, he was finishing another small job. I told him how much I appreciated all the work he had done. Rather casually, he replied: “Well Joerg, something will break at some point.”
I didn’t pay much attention, because after a year in the new house and with Slavo completing what I thought would be his final visit for a long time, I felt we were finally done. The house was finished and sorted. No more repairs, breakdowns, sweat and fuss.
Nada.
Fast forward exactly four weeks after Slavo’s visit. Anne suddenly broke the news: There was water dripping out of a ceiling lamp in our kitchen.
Gosh. That was impossible. How could this be happening?
And almost immediately, I completely lost it. A substantial anger attack mixed with frustration, disbelief and a mild sense of catastrophe – probably not too dissimilar to Rumpelstiltskin bouncing around in a rage (see image above).
Anne later summarised my reaction as “completely over the top, inappropriate and unnecessary.”
Thank you darling.
It took me a while to return to something resembling my usual calm self. We eventually devised a plan, and one week later the leak was fixed. We even managed to make a few improvements to the bathroom in the process. Slavo to the rescue …
Around that time, I happened to be listening to Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward. Rather fittingly, Rohr was talking about what he calls “shadowboxing” … the lifelong work of recognising and integrating our shadow sides – the parts of ourselves that we prefer not to see.
One of the ways our shadow reveals itself, Rohr suggests, is when we have a strong emotional reaction that seems out of proportion to what has actually happened.
Well. Richard Rohr might as well have been standing in our kitchen … He summarises his practice in a wonderful sentence: “I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then I must watch my reaction to it.”
It is the second part that particularly stayed with me: watch my reaction.
Because these little humiliations can puncture what Rohr calls our idealised persona … the person we like to believe we are … and reveal something lurking underneath. And my reaction to the leak had certainly punctured mine.
Looking at it more carefully, I realised I was not quite as relaxed about uncertainty and lack of control as I liked to think.
Logically, I knew that things in a house way more than 100 years old can and will break. But somewhere deeper inside me, I wanted the house to be perfect, finished and under control. Perhaps there was even a part of me that thought: After everything we have put into this house, surely, I deserve for things to work now.
Suddenly, the intensity of my reaction made a little more sense.
The leak was one problem. Underneath it sat my need to have things sorted, my desire to be in control, and perhaps even my belief that when everything around me is under control, I am safe. It turns out some rather interesting shadows had apparently been hiding behind that ceiling lamp.
But shadowboxing isn’t about condemning ourselves for having these reactions. It is about noticing them, because once we can see them, they don’t need to control us quite so much.
We all encounter difficult and stressful situations. Most of the time, we deal with them and move on. But occasionally, something relatively small happens and our internal reaction seems strangely large. Rather than immediately constructing a self-justifying story … something Rohr admits he can do himself within seconds … perhaps we can become curious:
- Why does THAT bother me so much?
- What feels threatened?
- What am I trying to protect?
- What does this tell me about the person I need to believe I am?
Perhaps these moments are what Rohr means by his “good humiliations.” Not humiliation deliberately inflicted by others and certainly not a reason to go looking for suffering. Rather, the ordinary moments life gives us that puncture our carefully constructed image of ourselves and bring us a little closer to humility.
The word humility itself is connected to the Latin humus … earth or ground. Perhaps there is something rather beautiful in that. Every now and then, life brings us back down to earth and makes us more grounded.
Slavo wisely shared: “Something will break at some point.”
Perhaps the wisdom isn’t learning how to construct a life in which nothing ever breaks but learning to notice what breaks open in us when it does.
And maybe that’s why Richard Rohr prays for one good humiliation a day.
I’m not quite sure I’m ready to join him in that prayer yet. But perhaps we can all become a little more curious the next time our reaction seems considerably bigger than the actual problem and pause before blaming the leaking pipe, the person in front of us or the universe.
There might just be a little shadow lurking in the dark, waiting to be seen.
So perhaps we shouldn’t waste a good humiliation …
Cheerio,
Joerg
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