Very Demure. Very Mindful.
There’s a recent ridiculous trend about being “Very demure. Very mindful.”
I don’t know the context, but you don’t have to, to get that someone is poking fun at our society at large. I think I watched one of the spoof reels on this trend sent to me by a friend about 20 times because I found it so hilariously clever.
A comedian says that he’s not very demure in his relationship with his mother. "See how I take my mother for granted? Very Freudian. Very Textbook. Very knee. Very jerk. Very passive. Very aggressive. Very only. Very child."
When I shared it with my kids, their favorite line was, “Of course, my mother knows how to press my buttons. She installed them.”
Ahhhhh. Ain’t it so? Dor L’dor. Generation to generation. Buttons are pressed. Personalities are created. Coping mechanisms develop. Such is life; here we go, loop de loop.
Here we go, trudging along triggered, walled up, sarcastic or cynical, people pleasing, spiritually bypassing, or complete shutdown. We all develop ways to feel safe with the illusion of control.
Great humor is incisive, and it cuts so deep that we are invited to laugh (if not cry).
But who is the master of triggers? Who created this whole notion of relationships, love, and heartbreak? Who is the great installer of all the world's buttons? That’s right, it’s God
In His infinite wisdom and/or infinite desire to be known and loved, He created a world with all sorts of interpersonal intricacies. Not to torture us. But to allow us to eventually experience the greatest joys and pleasures.
Think about it: where in life do you feel the most satisfaction? In the rooms-to-go-room-whole-hog delivered to your home and paid for by your parents? Or the carefully curated, hard-earned-by-the-sweat-of-your-brow intentional decor?
It’s not my opinion. It’s the well-researched conclusion that the things we say, UGH, about now will later bring a deeply pleasurable AH. Take my weekly hot yoga practice. I dread it. I start each class in agony. I am nauseous and tell myself this is the last time I’m doing this. Ughhhh. Yet, at the end of each class, I feel limber as a willow, with all my endorphins firing a unanimous AHHHHH. I breathed. I focused. I sat in my discomfort. I am obsessed. For now. Until the next class. When I’ll be back in dread.
Learning Chasidus has taught me that God carefully and lovingly installed each of us with the most sensitive and tender buttons. They will get pressed. By the people, God intentionally put in our lives to do just that.
We will get triggered.
Now what?
Do the work!
Start with awareness. Then have compassion for yourself. Know this that it is so gosh-darn hard. It is so hard to be a human with all the mechanics of emotions and intellect. And then, with all the self-love and compassion you can muster, get to know yourself and which buttons are pressing on which thing you would like to improve about yourself.
Get to know that beneath all the stuff, even deeper than your personality, ego, emotions, and cognition, is your essence—- your chekek elokai mi’maal Mamosh- an actual piece of the Almighty. (Mamosh. If you don't know that word, it's the Yiddish version of literally. Like, literally, literally.)
That’s some powerful presence. Some powerful letting go.
I’ve learned that we must not get stuck at the mechanics, at the buttons, but to experience real joy and pleasure in life, we must be willing to go deeper. Get to know your divine spark because that’s your superpower.
It may take a lifetime, but they say it’s worth it.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DABh9XhPv6X/?igsh=MTI0anQ2OWhpYnN6cA==