Vachon Imagined

Random check-ins.

Relationship checkups.

No different from brushing my teeth, changing the oil in my car, or eating to refuel my body, I also do relationship check-ins.

“Hey, buddy,” I say to my son. “How am I doing as a mom? Is there anything I’m doing that’s hurting you? What am I doing right?”

I most enjoy these conversations because my son tells me exactly what he thinks. He hasn’t yet perfected the ability to hide from himself.

If I’m doing something he doesn’t like, he tells me.

Very detailed, too.

And I’ve trained myself to listen without becoming defensive.

Every time I feel that life rising up inside me, I have trained myself to humble myself.

It’s not me humbling myself before him.

It’s not even me humbling myself before myself.

It’s life itself.

No matter what form it takes, humility is the answer to revelation.

No matter the problem, humility is the answer.

I’ve trained myself to notice pride.

I can tell you what it feels like.

I can tell you where it happens.

A tightness in my chest.

A racing impulse to harm.

I can tell you the time, the second, the precise moment it arrives and yes, sometimes it gets away from me.

But I’ve trained myself over time to notice it.

And whatever it is, I stop.

There’s no long explanation about my childhood.

No years spent telling the story over and over about why something should be happening differently.

I just stop.

It’s that simple.

Life happens so quickly that I think we give ourselves far too much credit for believing we can control it.

It’s like trying to wrestle a gorilla to the ground.

You can prepare yourself. Tighten your grip. Convince yourself you’re strong enough.

Prepared enough.

But the gorilla is still a gorilla.

There are forces moving through life that are simply larger than our ability to control them.

And yet we spend so much of our time pretending we have control.

Then something happens.

Someone says something.

Someone reacts.

Someone loses their temper.

And immediately, the story begins.

“Did you see that?”

“Did you see what she did?”

“Can you believe he said that?”

And suddenly, everyone has become an expert on someone else’s life.

We reconstruct what happened.

We assign motives.

We decide who was right, who was wrong, who started it, who should apologize.

The event itself lasted perhaps ten seconds.

The story about it can last for ten years, many times more.

And while everyone is looking at her, she is looking at him, he is looking at them, they are looking at each other, almost no one is looking at themselves.

That is where humility begins.

Not with controlling the gorilla.

With noticing that you’re wrestling it in the first place.

And then looking at yourself.

What am I doing?

What am I bringing into this?

What is happening inside me?

And if what I’m doing is harming someone, you stop.

You simply stop.

No elaborate story.

No defense.

No explanation about why you became this way.

No need to make the other person understand you before you take responsibility for yourself.

You stop.

Because sometimes revelation doesn’t require another conversation.

Sometimes it requires an action.

Sometimes the most humble thing a person can do is simply stop hurting someone.

And perhaps if we want the world to change, we should stop beginning with everyone else.

We should begin with ourselves.