Click Your Heels and Say These Words

Click Your Heels and Say These Words

We are creatures of math, the kind we learn at a young age: “this” plus “that” equals “the right answer.” Voila! Got it!?

And many of us search forevermore for the equation that will lead to right answers. We go to the therapist, the psychic, the priest, all manner of wisdom (and other) in search of the equation that will snap that right answer into place. “Yup, this is it — the best one, the right one, the only one, the one I have been waiting for!” Then, of course, it isn’t. Perhaps the only thing more impressive than the frustration of the search is the resilience of the searcher.

Maybe the thing we need is the thing we have, the first part of the equation: this plus that, and then, this plus that plus that plus this plus this plus that …. No singularity can meet the complexity of the human brain and spirit and history, the myriad currents that pour into each and every being. Every singular answer comes to the end of itself eventually, and the stress of failure becomes even greater than the identified problem itself.?

So, what if we let go of the right answer in favor of the continuous question? What if we follow our curiosity rather than chasing the illusion of certainty? Relational challenges, professional paralysis, personal impasse, feelings of despair, disappointment, anger?— any issue is better addressed through curiosity than blind pursuit. And curiosity makes room for good company, whereas desperation scares company off.

My view, which takes in the ideas proffered by Family Constellations sprinkled liberally with many other influences, invites renewed curiosity. Where have you been? Who was with you? Where did you come from? What are the traumas and triumphs and other threads that form the tableau behind you? What is the language of your love, of your connection to what was? How will this language take shape as you move away from what was toward what will be? This plus that plus this plus that plus this …?

What if we can relax into a rhythm of curiosity, organically building out from this center? We cannot fail at wonder, and even when we do, we can wonder why and then wonder what is next. We cannot fail and even when we do — an easeful paradox.

Bert Hellinger used to talk about making friends with our greatest fears, whether cancer or the plane going down. The suggestion was not to embrace resignation. Rather, he was inviting us to move out of the confines of the rigid equation of “this” plus “that” equals “the right answer.” I understood his statement this way: the battle for life causes us to lose life even as we pursue it.

Dorothy clicks her heels three times to get home. And “Open sesame” leads the way to the treasure.?Three steps to health. Ten steps to love. The key to happiness. The quest for the one magic path suffocates the very thing that is most necessary especially in the toughest times: the generative spirit of wonder. Wonder has no timeframe, no number of steps, no tested formula: it is a setting out … again. Every morning is just that, a setting out again.

I wonder where this day will take me, where I will take this day.?