Finding Kung Fu In The Contrast

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am made up of a lot of contradictory qualities; I am opinionated but open minded, I love life but am plagued by depression and anxiety that bring me down like a weak ox, I believe in natural living but take pharmaceuticals for my mental illness, I love kids but can't stand to be around large groups of them for more than short stretches of time, I think all killing is wrong except that I'm not theoretically against capital punishment, I believe in being completely honest with myself and others except for when it might hurt either them or myself.

I'm not afraid of a lot of things that others are afraid of such as marriage, sharing a bank account with my spouse, making changes, admitting when I'm wrong, comparing unfavorably to insects whose intelligence and importance I don't believe human beings are at all qualified to measure, being ridiculous, making mistakes, eating leftovers that are seven days old (provided they don't smell or look suspicious and aren't already walking on their own recognizance), saying the unpopular thing, and seeing into the hearts of human beings.

I have just gotten my yellow belt in Kung Fu and I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be Kung Fu in my life.  I was thinking about this already, but during every class we take our teacher discusses what it means not to simply practice Kung Fu but what it means to be Kung Fu.  He is a philosopher, a quality I appreciate a great deal in others, and so with our ass-kicking exercises we always get something more to think about. 

Being Kung Fu, the way I understand it, is to seek mastery, balance, peace, strength, and grace.  A question has been running around in my head for a couple weeks now: can a person like me really be Kung Fu?

I'm thinking quite a bit about the manner in which I ended the two friendships that I blew up with verbal C4 in the past year.  If I examine myself, my actions, my reactions, and my heart I can't say that I behaved with any real strength, grace, mastery, peace, or balance.

No matter how justified I might feel in having expressed my feelings to the people involved, I think I missed the first principle of Kung Fu which is: get away, get away, get away, get away... Oh wait, that's the first four principles.  What's difficult for me is that I don't lash out at people very often so when I do I instantly become hideous.  I become a person I don't respect and who is out of my control.  I hold a lot of things in.  I don't often tell friends that they've hurt my feelings because I know that if I do it's me, more than them, who will end up even more hurt by discussing it.  Instead I try to deal with what I feel, try to process it one ended, and unfortunately I often end up blaming myself even though I know it's a sham and self abuse.  If a friend continues to hurt me it just piles up until the dump heap my heart is begins to ferment and like all illegal distilling operations, threatens to explode.

I have a very hard time being honest with people when they displease me.  I am deeply frightened of all confrontational situations.  Telling a friend that they have done something that hurt my feelings has never yet ended well for me.  I almost always end up alienating them and feeling like it was me who was all wrong and ashamed of having the feelings I've had.  So I keep my mouth shut until the whole operation suddenly blows and then I let it all come out at once, purging the ugly and the pain in huge ugly gestures.

The last time I did this I instantly had my nose rubbed in my own hideous ugly outpouring with a hideous ugly outpouring from the friend in question.  The only thing I did in that whole mess that I can say came from a place of strength and grace was my willingness to admit to the recipient of my ugly that I had really been unnecessarily hurtful and to acknowledge how horribly I had handled the situation and to honestly apologize for it.

However, I never apologized to the chauvinist for having yelled and cursed at him on the top of my lungs.  I kept telling myself that his refusal to discuss my own business with me because I'm not "the man of the house" was provocation enough for my outrage.  I told myself that legally he had no right to refuse to talk to his own landlord about his lease*.  I told myself he deserved to be screamed at by me because of how he continued to say the meanest things to me, so mean he made me cry, so mean I felt like his words were nasty spurs being kicked into my actual flesh.  I cried so openly that I scared the crap out of Max who heard me yelling into the phone and swearing out loud which I never do in front of him.  Max hates the chauvinist for being such an asshole to his mother.  It was one of the sweetest moments in my life as a mother to see my son draw pictures of the faces he would make to the person who had made me scream and cry uncontrollably if he had half a chance.  The little dude wanted to protect his mother who almost never cries.

But I keep thinking about this whole interaction now.  In light of my current journey I can't help but think that I should send a note of apology.  Not for having refused to defer the discussion of the lease to my husband, but for having lost control and responded in such a mean way.  I can't help but ask myself if it wouldn't be good for my spirit to apologize for the screaming.  I feel no need to apologize for thinking what I do of this person.  I don't feel the least bit sorry for being outraged at such treatment, but I do feel sorry for the way in which I handled it.

I started off writing this post meaning to suggest that a person like me might not be capable of finding the Kung Fu in my contrasts but as I've been writing I see that it isn't a question of "am I capable" but a question of learning new ways to deal with conflict.  Just as I have started learning new kicks as a yellow belt, there are new principles of conflict resolution to learn in my everyday life as well. 

I am thinking about how I might have handled the situation with the chauvinist** differently.  The moment it became clear that he was not going to relent on his insistence to only speak to the man of our house I should have calmly pointed out that as his landlord he had no legal right to refuse to discuss my property and his lease with me.  If he still insisted on speaking about it only with Philip (who, in this instance, was not the person most knowledgeable about what needed discussing) I should have told him that if he couldn't bring himself to discuss the issue with me then he could put the woman of his house on the phone because we were the two people who knew most about the situation anyway.  I knew he was on the phone because she didn't want to talk to me or Philip and she was standing behind him to resolve this issue, but even so I could have offered that as a possible solution.

Philip was as disbelieving as I was that this situation was even happening.  Here is one of the reasons I love Philip so much: he would have stood behind me if I had insisted that the chauvinist only speak with me.  He pointed out himself that I knew more about the whole business than he did and that this dude was being an asshole to me.

So I should have remained calm and ended the call before losing myself in rage.  I could have done it all still insisting on my legal rights and yet without the ugly.  I am thinking on this now.

I keep forming appropriate apologies in my head.  I would like to become better at resolving conflict with elan.

Does being balanced, strong, graceful, and peaceful mean that I have to be a person less rich in contrast?  I was thinking that this might prove difficult but now I'm thinking that it isn't important to be quiet about my opinions or to have no contrast in my personality; the important thing is to develop ever more awareness about how I use and project my opinions and my beliefs and my strengths.  I think the essence of Kung Fu is purpose.  Every move I learn on the mat is meant to give me tools to fight with and each action has a purpose and first I learn the move and then I have to come to an understanding of how that move can be used to good purpose.  When you are sharp with awareness, both physically and mentally, every choice you make will have better aim and better purpose.  My strengths, when thrown around without awareness, become weaknesses. 

This is something I can work on.  I am learning more with each encounter with conflict.  If I apologize it will not be for who I am or for what I believe but for thoughtless, hurtful, and clumsy actions.  There are a lot of apologies that I might owe people, but I will not apologize for expecting a great deal from family and friends.  I will not apologize for being the voice against the crowds or even the people I love. 

And I love a lot of people. 

There are those in my town who think I'm pretty much gutter-tripe, who think I am a person to keep their children away from.  But Philip says that I get in these tangles because I constantly run towards people with open arms, with a willingness to give them everything I have and a desire to find the best in everyone I meet.  I experience a lot of disappointment and he says it's because I have an inherent faith that all people have some good in them.  I always want to tell him to fuck off when he says this because I am one hell of a tough person and I'm neither naive nor particularly trusting of people.  When he says it it kind of hurts because I know it's true.  When I meet people I instantly look for every best quality they have because I want to reflect that back to them.  I want to give light because I've been so dark.  I don't have a lot to give but reflected light. 

I'm not comfortable with the image of myself as this naive fool running towards people with open arms because I know that in reality I rarely tell anyone the whole truth about myself except for here on my blog.  My little sanctuary of truth.  Here I tell you how I punch myself first so that no one else's blows can surprise or hurt.  I constantly try to take everyone else's power away from them, their power to tell me what they really think of me, how disappointed they might be...because by the time I was 10 years old I was pretty much done letting people get the first punch in to my gut.  I always give myself the hardest blows so that no one else can.

I can see that being Kung Fu in my life is going to be one hell of a philosophical watershed.  Remember at the beginning of the year when I was talking about not apologizing for who I am and how I was going to meet myself all over again and finally heal?  It's been a pretty crazy ride so far.  I understand now, more than I did in January, that this healing thing is going to have to go as deep as the scars do.  Miles into the earth.  There's no easy fix.  But I do believe that doing a power yell while delivering a wicked back leg wheel kick is something like a spiritual war cry.



You Can't Get Off This Train Without A Rope

I'm Sorry For Every Punch You Threw





* This is fact.  This was last winter when we realized that we were going to have to let the other house go into foreclosure because we couldn't even afford to wait to sell it because we couldn't charge enough rent to cover the taxes and that we were going to have to declare bankruptcy, an awful moment in our history and a painful time already, without the added conflict which ensued from our friends/tenants.  It was a complicated situation we never wanted to be in in the first place.

**I continue to refer to this man as "the chauvinist" because it is simply what he is to me.  I am not going to reveal his name on this blog.  If by some slim strange chance he should ever read this and want to out his own identity, he may do so with my complete blessing.  Local people who know both parties concerned will obviously know who I'm talking about, but I see no value in using his name here nor any need to come up with a less damning epithet for him.  He is what he is and as much as I am looking at ways that I can approach such situations with more grace on my part, there will not come a time when I will feel the need to call an asshole a sweetie-pie.