Yesterday I was sitting on the bed watching an awesome movie with Keanu Reaves called The Little Buddha, when my partner walks in, gently tells me that I forgot to switch off the light in the bathroom, and asks if I could be mindful of those little things.
I could feel defensiveness come up within me. In the past, I would have defended myself. Fortunately, with the help of many people, I have cultivated the capacity to simply sit with what is coming up as lovingly as possible for everyone involved.
I let this inner tension release as it came up and allowed myself to be willing to see things from her perspective. I understood where she was coming from; it was not really about switching the light off but rather, about showing care and consideration to everyone in the house.
In the past, I would leave the toilet seat up as well. Again, it is what this represents that is important. Leaving the toilet seat up in a house with other people that prefer to have the toilet seat down, is coming from a place which doesn’t care for and consider others.
If I can make everyone’s lives easier and more convenient, then this is a great gift. We all love to help but sometimes, our pride and lack of insight block us from seeing clearly.
In the case of switching off the light, I could see that this was important to her and that I could bring even more care and consideration into the relationship. I could feel the pull to defend and justify those actions. Fortunately, I remained open and thanked my partner for sharing things so compassionately and gently. She is really great at that and I have learnt much in that regard from her.
The Cost of Defensiveness
When we are defensive, we are more interested in being right and proving someone wrong than we are in growing, caring for life, and enjoying life together.
It helps to ask ourselves:
“Am I willing to pay that price? Am I willing to poison this relationship, bring suffering to my beloved and myself, generate guilt and tension? Or would I rather let this one go and enjoy life together?”
When we put it that way, it becomes a lot easier to be willing to let it go.
Moreover, what are we really defending? What does it even mean to defend ourselves?
If someone asks us to put the toilet seat down, they are merely expressing their own preference. They may do so gently and calmly or they may speak to us being a little rude and demanding. Either way, how someone speaks to us is completely a reflection of their own inner attitudes, perceptions, and feelings.
If something feels personal to us, we have an opportunity to examine our beliefs and perception. We can ask ourselves:
“Could it be that this is not as personal as it seems?”
Perhaps we may like to put ourselves in the shoes of the one who is speaking to us. What might they be feeling? How are they seeing things? Instead of trying to prove them wrong and defend the way we are seeing things at the moment, we have an incredible opportunity to expand our perspective and literally see things differently.
When we are willing to see things differently and truly step into someone else’s shoes, then we have nothing to defend. We may say to our beloved:
“I see that this is important to you and am willing to change to make life easier for you.”
What can you say to that? Such a heartfelt response opens up the relationship in incredible ways and brings healing to everyone. Our beloved may laugh forgetting all their anxieties. This is the power of being willing to see things differently and let go of defending ourselves.
The Nature of Defensiveness
When we defend ourselves, we perceive ourselves to be under attack. In reality, no one can ever attack us without our permission. Or as Gandhi put it:
“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
If someone says something incredibly mean and horrible to us, it is up to us whether we take it personally and defend ourselves or whether we are curious and look to see what they are saying is saying about how they are feeling and seeing things.
Someone may say to us “you are so useless!” and we may take it very personally. I have taken this personally many times before. Growing up, it is something I felt and came to believe about myself. Many of us feel like we are not good enough. We live our life trying to be better without recognising that underlying this motivation is a belief that “I’m not good enough”. We think that changing things on the outside will change how we feel on the inside, only to be disappointed when we get the amazing job and relationship that none of that has the power to change how we feel on the inside.
It is up to us. But we live in a society that believes it is outside of ourselves. I recognise this seed of not enough in many people who were around me as I grew up. I imagine that as a child, I looked to these people that I loved dearly and trusted greatly, and I began to take on their perceptions as my own — I wanted to be like them because I thought they were amazing.
Rarely, if ever, was I told “you are incredible and wonderful exactly as you and have absolutely nothing to prove.” I also recognise that not many people have truly had the grace of growing up in such a warm and wholesome environment. My father grew up in the Soviet Union which wasn’t exactly the most emotionally warmest of places.
If we live in a place where everyone sees the world through a green lens and tell us about the green world they see, we naturally start to see the world that way too. Similarly, it is very popular to see life through the lens of “I’m not enough, I need to prove myself and leave a mark, and I need more.”
How many people are truly at peace and content with life as it is, wanting nothing and completely happy regardless of anything anyone says? This is a sign of someone who feels complete and whole within themselves. There are not many of us who deeply feel that we are beautiful, more than enough, and all is well as it is right now — but there can be if we are willing.
If we are willing to consider the possibility that feeling like we are enough, is simply a decision that we can make right now. If we are willing to see beyond how we think things are and touch the possibility that life is so much more vast and expansive than we can comprehend. If we are willing to look deeply and see that when someone is saying “you are useless!” they are sharing with us how they feel on the inside.
Are we willing to let them speak, feel heard, and deeply seen? It takes an incredible level of humility and willingness to see that what someone says is an opportunity to see them deeper and to be there for the parts that are hurting within themselves.
Would someone who is happy and at peace within themselves say anything remotely mean or potentially hurtful to anyone else? When our hearts are at peace, we wish nothing but the best for everyone and our thoughts, words, and actions align with love, care, and healing for everyone.
They are hurting too
Could it be that we are not the only ones that suffer? What our beloved is saying to us, is reflecting their own inner world. If we are willing to listen as deeply as we can, we will start to hear what they are really trying to say:
What appears on the surface as “I hate you!”, if listened to deeply with an open heart and no defences, can be heard to be coming from “I’m hurting.”
When we see that it is hurt and pain that is speaking, then we know how to respond; with care and compassion.
For a while, I was caught up in trying to say the right thing when my partner was hurting. But I saw that it was not really about saying the right thing but rather, it was simply a matter of seeing and being with those parts.
Giving those parts space and love. Internally, we may like to smile to those parts and imagine them as being embraced in love. We may like to say:
“Breathing in, I breathe in suffering.
Breathing out, I breathe out compassion.”
To make it even shorter we may say:
“Suffering…
Compassion…”
Most importantly we open ourselves to feeling everything that is being felt. We actually open ourselves to feeling the hurt of our beloved and also to feeling the hurt parts that are triggered within ourselves.
And we give all these parts a loving space to be here — without any pressure, judgement, or attempts to push anything away. We choose to be the loving space within which all is welcome.
We stop running and for a moment, we let it all be here exactly as it is with an inner smile.
Even if we don’t feel like smiling, we can smile to the part that doesn’t want to smile.
In this way, we open ourselves as a source of love and compassion in the relationship. A source of healing for ourselves and our beloved. So you see, when your partner is asking you to put the toilet seat down it is not really about the toilet seat.
They are inviting you to step into your heart and see beyond what you think is possible. You are being invited to a life of joy, beauty, and harmony. It is and always has been, completely up to you whether you are willing to answer the invitation or not.
Thank you for taking the time to read this piece. If you’d like to continue to explore relationships with deeper love, honesty, and growth for everyone, you are welcome to have this free 5-part Incredibly Loving Relationships Mini-Course that will help open things up even more and support the inner transformation.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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