This Too Shall Pass

I remember a time many years ago when I was much younger and far more prone to allow the outside world to affect me that I came to my father with something that was troubling me.  In hindsight, for the life of me, I cannot remember what was troubling me at the time however I will never forget the words that he imparted upon me.  When I told my father the dilemma I was facing, he simply sat and listened to me and then when he heard all of the details of my affair he quite succinctly said, “Son, this too shall pass.”

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Not wanting to be deterred from my anguish, I continued on with my plight for my father to hear.  I poured out all of the details about why this was such a traumatic life event.  I said something to the effect, “Yes, but just think what so and so is going to think about me now (I can’t even remember who it was).” Without missing a beat my wise father responded, “If you knew how infrequently people really thought about you, you would never worry about what people thought about you.” At the time these words felt somewhat heartless and disengaged but as the years passed, I found them more and more prescient as I discovered an abundance of worries and dilemmas continuing to enter my life.  The trials kept coming and my father’s words always lingered in the background long after that first initial conversation with him.  Each time something pressing in my life manifested, I would always harken back to that day with my father.  I began seeing that no matter how bad, frustrating, life-changing something seemed in my life I fundamentally began understanding that this too shall pass.  If I became concerned about what someone might think I always remembered my father’s words, “If you knew how infrequently people really thought about you, you would never worry about what people thought about you.”

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One of my own sons came to me recently with a similar dilemma in his life.  He essentially told me he felt directionless and didn’t know what he was going to do with his life.  I mentioned to him that at 18-years-old people seldom know what they want to do with their life.  Even those that purport to know most likely are just following a course that has been imposed upon them by other adults in their life.  And then, I decided to pass on his grandfather’s words to him.  “Son, this too shall pass.” When my son continued, he said something to me that I had uttered to my own father.  “I just don’t know if people like me.”  This time, instead of repeating the words of my father I decided to take a little different tact with my son: The question isn’t do other people like you.  The question is, do you like yourself?  Are you happy with how you are living your life?  And if you’re not, we need to figure out some steps to get you to a place where you love yourself and then it will matter not what other people think of you.  We can never alter the way other people think about us.  We can only alter our relationship with ourselves. We talked for 40 minutes.  For my son and me this is an epic conversation.  We don’t generally spend 40 minutes on the phone together.  Lately, I’ve been asking myself how I can serve others and the message keeps coming back loudly and clearly:  start by serving your family and those around you first.  Once you have given them your full attention then we will concern ourselves with “bigger” work later.  Start in our own backyard.  When we begin healing the space inside of ourselves this is how we will create healing in the world. My son intimated to me that he struggled after his mother and I got divorced.  He told me that he lost his footing after that and has struggled in the ensuing years.  I listened.  I let him know that I heard what he was saying, and I acknowledged how hard that time must have been in his life. “Your mom and I could have done a better job of communicating to you that our divorce had nothing to do with you.”  The divorce had everything to do with his mother and me.  I did that thing fathers sometimes do with sons—treating them as if they are older than they actually are.  My son was eleven when we divorced.  I treated him as if he were 18 then.  He would have been better served if I had treated him as an 11-year-old.  These are life’s tough lessons. It was interesting to me that my son called me seeking advice and, in the end, he taught me something.  In order to heal the past, we must become present in the moment.  It’s vitally important to acknowledge the times when we could have done better with those that we love.  It’s more important to change the behavior that may have caused someone else’s pain.  It’s even more important for us to begin loving ourselves fully as a magnificent child of the Creator. When we place our happiness in the hands of others, we enter a world that we simply have no control over. However, when we take responsibility for our own actions and behaviors, we have the ability to become empowered.  I mentioned to my son that the only way to truly get to know ourselves is through silence.  In the space of silence, we are able to witness our thoughts and we can determine where our mind is telling us stories that don’t align with our fundamental truth.  When we pause our life, our truth starts peeking its little head out and we can begin to follow that truth without concern for what other people may think.

This Too Shall Pass:

“Find your bliss and follow it,” I told me son.  Find the thing that lights you up and pour your heart and soul into it.  Become the example of harmonious happiness to others and the only way to do that is to be unapologetically your truest essence.  Fall in love with loving yourself and by doing so you will become an example to those struggling around you.  And when we fall short (which we all do from time to time) understand in your heart that this too shall pass.  Correct your shortcomings and celebrate your moments of strength and grace.  The externals will change; the internals when properly cared for will be the constant that will guide us through the storms. We mustn’t concern ourselves with what others might think.  They are too busy trying to master their own journey to worry about what we are doing.  When we choose to make ourselves a masterpiece, we become the possibility for others to claim.  Everyone, at the deepest recesses of their being, longs to be happy and when we discover and live our own happiness, we become the way for others to follow.  It all starts from within.  We build it from the inside out.  And when we do we become the testament to a life well lived.  We all have the capacity to do it if we only give ourselves a little break.  And in that break, when we practice silence, we discover our own truth.  We just need the quietude in order to hear the call.

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