Genevieve Murphy – Mental Metamorphosis, November 19, 2011
Mental Metamorphosis
As we sat there together, under the rainbowed sky of Rokkasho, Japan, in the ceramic studio, mixing clay together, a conversation was initiated that would alter my paradigm of life completely. It began as a telling of tales, so to speak… of encounters, loves and circumstances of lives past. It was the sort of conversation you could only have with someone you were connected to at the core of your being… a soul mate, so to speak. These were topics usually left covered and buried deep within, rarely revealed to anyone, including ourselves. First he went, sharing several stories of lost loves and the experiences connected with them. Then, I went. I began with a surface story, but as the conversation progressed, I began digging deeper and deeper, unveiling my stories of sadness and exposing the emotional scars that accompanied them. None of this was easy or comfortable, but these were the types of conversations we had.
After several rounds of story telling, I sat there, waiting for his response. I was feeling quite sad and at a loss. These were topics I had not thought about for quite some time and discussing them conjured up feelings of sadness and self pity. I pondered how so many things could happen to one person in such a short amount of time. I turned to my friend, expecting a response of sympathy, if not empathy. However, that is not at all what I got. Instead the response he gave felt like a verbal blow that stung harder than any words could describe.
Instead of words of compassion and kindness, I got what I interpreted to be a lecture on personal responsibility. I was so taken aback and confused by this response. He was not in any way curt or malicious, disrespectful or judgmental… he was simply direct and what I now understand to be, honest. However, in that moment, I could not see or understand it as such. As I sat there in utter disbelief I became more and more irate! My blood began to boil. I could physically feel my body temperature rise and my heart rate quicken as a wave of angered adrenaline washed over me. I had had a lot of experience defending myself at that point in my life, and I could feel the defense mechanisms taking place and a verbal eruption about to explode. How dare he take my most vulnerable moment with him and turn it into a lecture of personal responsibility, as if the things that had happened to me were somehow MY fault!!! Words of hurt, anger and betrayal spewed from my lips as tears stung my eyes.
After listening to my angry rebuttal for quite some time he calmly said, “You’re not listening.”
Of course I was listening, I thought to myself… you’re telling me it’s MY fault these things happened. What kind of fucked up shit is that to say??? “I did NOT do these things to myself, nor did I ask for them to happen… other people did them to me – I am the victim! I have no control over the things that happened, therefore – I have NO RESPONSIBILITY! Stop using that fucking word” I shouted.
“You’re not listening” he calmly repeated once again.
I needed a break, this was too much! I sat in anger in the studio, continuing to mix and pour this ugly, gray concoction of clay into clunky plaster molds. Somehow it was a perfect representation of my emotions at that moment. Several hours and a bottle of wine later, we had not progressed much further in our conversation… him telling me I wasn’t listening and me being confused, angry and defensive. Exhausted and emotionally drained we decided to call it a night.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of rain hitting the tin roof top. A typical fall morning in Aomori, which suited my mood just fine! As I sat up my body felt physically heavy and my head was spinning. However, it was not at all related to the bottle of wine from the night before… this felt utterly foreign. As I got up my thoughts started racing and reeling from the day before. I was still hurt and confused. I tried to go about my morning as normal, but I soon found myself crouched, sobbing uncontrollably on the bathroom floor. What the hell is wrong with me??? I thought to myself. I’ve got to get out of here – nothing is making sense. I grabbed my coat and ran out the door. I ran as fast and as far as I could. My eyes competed with the drops of Mother Nature as the raindrops pelted my body harder and harder the faster I ran. My lungs stung from the gasps of cold, wet air I was inhaling, but I didn’t care. I had no destination, just an insatiable need to run…so that’s what I did.
After what felt like hours, I finally stopped in the middle of a dirt road, surrounded by harvested rice fields. As I stood there, gasping for breath, I finally felt ready to reexamine the conversation from the day before. Knowing my friend as well as I did, I knew there was something I just wasn’t getting, but whatever that was…it was really important, and I needed to “get it.” I rewound our conversation in my head over and over again trying to interpret it this way and that way, but still it wasn’t making sense. Then I realized I was still looking at it from the same perspective. How can I look at this differently? Suddenly, like a lingering dark cloud rolling past, revealing the glorious sunshine behind it…I got it!!!
I will never forget the feeling of indescribable joy that consumed my entire being and the instantaneous dissipation of what felt like a thousand pounds of dead weight fall from my chest, as I stood in the middle of that barren rice field, alone, completely drenched in rain, mud up to my knees, with tears and snot frozen to my face. I felt as light as a feather and giddy with happiness as a true understanding of peace replaced the sadness. That is when and where my Mental Metamorphosis began. That epiphany of comprehension, that I have carried with me ever since, completely restructured my entire perspective and understanding of life.
The responsibility I had was not in the circumstances themselves, which is all I could hear in my friend’s words and what I was so hung up on the day before. Obviously, I couldn’t control those particular life circumstances, no matter how hard I might have wanted to. Life inevitably throws us curve balls…some points in our lives get hit harder than others, and some points are in more rapid succession. This is part of life and my friend was not implying that I be held responsible for this. Rather, my responsibility laid in my interpretation of the situations… how I chose to see them and what I chose to carry with me from them. The paradigm I had constructed for myself at that point was one of woefulness and self pity. A pity party for one, as I used to call it. However, I had chosen to carry the hurt, the sadness and the anger with me. I honestly believed I had been “working through” these feelings during the several years prior, in my isolated fishing and farming village in rural Aomori. I thought I was “getting better.” I thought isolation and time to “process”, writing a journal, exploring new countries, and pushing myself to new challenges was the key to healing. But apparently I was wrong! While I am insanely glad I took that route as well, as it did push me to develop myself in new ways, it turned out all I really needed was a new way of looking at the same situation.
Fortunately, my incredibly wise and dear friend was able to guide me to this realization. It turns out he WAS listening empathetically and compassionately after all. He could tell from our conversation that I had no understanding of this concept and he knew that as long as I was choosing to live in this paradigm, I would never “heal” or shed the pain I was holding on to so tightly. However, this was a concept I had to realize and understand on my own, all he could do was repeat his words of wisdom and guidance until I could finally hear them. He had led me to the water; it was up to me to drink.
As I practically skipped and floated back to my friend’s house, I revisited each of my negative situations and looked at them with this new insight. Obviously these things were a part of me and I was never going to discard them completely, nor would I really want to. Despite the negative aspect of them, they still helped me grow and develop and become the person I was. However, I realized that my responsibility was to glean the good from them, no matter how hard it was, and believe me… some of them were pretty hard!…and choose to carry that part with me instead. This freedom finally allowed me to leave all the negativity behind! I could hold onto the memory without holding onto the pain.
I went and talked to my friend with a new heart and a new attitude.
We talked again, for several hours, this time, in a much calmer tone. I eventually asked him how he knew what to say to me? He said that as I retold my stories I used negative and victimized language and it was through the use of these words he was able to assess my emotional state. Having been down a similar road before, he knew I was never going to fully move past or process all my feelings until I understood my responsibility in them, and that they were feelings I had created. Therefore, it was my responsibility to understand how to view them differently. No one could do that for me, I had to figure how to on my own. Apparently, his response in the studio was not a lack of sympathy or empathy after all, but of compassion and a desire for me to see and understand this concept. I left feeling rejuvenated and alive!
Since that day a joyful and peaceful energy continues to flow through me, which is the greatest gift in life I have discovered thus far. I have truly grasped the importance of gleaning the good of every situation and the value of living each day to the fullest. Since then I have discovered other authors who have written about this concept as well. Some call it a paradigm shift, others a transformation of human consciousness, I refer to it as a mental metamorphosis. No matter what you choose to call it, it is all the same… an understanding of responsibility in how we choose to live, see and interpret the world and what we choose to carry with us throughout it.
I went to visit my friend again several weeks after that incredible day. By then he had fired all the cups we had poured into molds and he was excited to show them to me. He made me close my eyes as we walked into the studio. When he finally let me open them I was left breathless! There before me were hundreds of finely detailed, gorgeous, leaf shaped cups. In the firing process they had transformed into the most beautiful, iridescently pure white, solid yet fragile, ceramic I had ever seen. They were a masterpiece! I had no idea I was a part of making something so beautiful and so special that day. As I gently held one in my hand, I smiled… somehow it was a perfect representation of my emotions at that moment.
Genevieve Murphy
The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
-Kahlil Gibran
Educator, friend, daughter, sister, dreamer, volunteer, advocate, traveler, adventurer, optimist, initiator, humanitarian, listener, advisor, writer, dancer, photographer, lover of life.
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