Both Sides Now

Eight writers gathered online yesterday for our First-Ever Hay House 3X Weekly Writing Group All-Day Marathon. Quite a mouthful that. Good turnout.

The format we followed was not wildly different from our regular 3X weekly accountability writing group sessions. They start with a meditation to ground us and last about two hours from start to finish. Yesterday’s session was considerably longer and with more breaks.

As my “projet du jour,” I turned my attention to the 100 Moments exercise prescribed by the Hay House Writing Challenge. The goal is to produce a list of (at least) 100 memories or incidents or “scenes” that you would like to elaborate on and fill out.

It doesn’t matter if the recall of those moments differs drastically from how someone else who was there remembers them. It is about recalling and recounting how you experienced them. Happy, sad, frightening, painful, joyous, or funny. That doesn’t matter.

What matters is what they meant to you and how they affected or changed your life. Did moving to a new house make your life better or worse? Did you look forward to Aunt Edna and Uncle Edwards’ visits or did you run and hide when they came over? Were you in the car when Daddy smashed it into the garage? Was he drunk or sober? Was he ever sober? And how was he when he sobered up?

My father regularly suffered from the “26-ounce flu.” We kids tittered and ducked him when he was in that place. We made a lot of bad things funny. Hungover Dad was usually in a foul mood and swayed unsteadily on his feet the morning after. Cue us kids to disappear by heading into our room or out the door. Alcoholics are lonely people. I should know. Like father, like daughter.

A recent Facebook post (there is much solid if fleeting, depth and wisdom on that platform) exhorted us to reserve judgment about people. Wait a little. Watch them in various situations. Get to know them a little better. Our perceptions of them might change.

I see the necessity in our writing of pulling in perspectives from all different angles and different times of our lives to create a fuller character and fuller story. Our perceptions change as we get to know people better. Our perceptions change as we get older and can see others through a more compassionate lens.

Capturing the moments of our lives and examining them more closely can produce rich if sometimes disturbing, results. When we recognize our inherent humanity and that of every flawed human being we encounter, we can make a choice to see them more clearly.

On reflection, we can better understand what was happening to them, and by association, what happened to us. It doesn’t change the damage done but it can mitigate and ease the more painful memories so they don’t hijack and cloud up our present. Don’t think me naive. I am fully aware that getting there can take years and years and years. If ever. It’s a choice. A hard one.