Heart Reading … Day 31

All our relations teach us who we are — if we let them.

Everyone has two basic avenues for growing life and love — work and home. Work is compensated with external financial means or internal satisfaction of one’s purpose. Home can be blood relative or not. The point is that there are tensions that ebb and flow in both of these life and love spaces which help us to understand who we are, to the extent that we are able to bear the tensions — not as martyrs but with gracefulness.

I often “find myself” getting angry with home when work is growing me or with work when home is particularly satisfying. Or I convince myself that home is great when work is not or work is great when home is not. This is not high level generalized emotion, it is very much directed at one or more humans.

At home the human who receives most of our angst is our lover(s) and sometimes, especially if the sex is good and no real issues are “up,” our angst gets channeled to the next levels of parents and children. At work the human receiving most of our angst is our direct supervisor, though if this person is especially skillful it can get channeled to just about anyone — workplaces give us ample opportunity to “find ourselves” reflected in others (clients, vendors, etc.), and it is easier to learn from our ugly reflections in their “mirrors” than from our glamorous ones.

How often do you “find yourself” musing that so-and-so is such a great communicator … if only “my person” could communicate like them? This line of thinking and feeling is real fertile soil for growth — if we are patient and kind and compassionate (with heart) towards ourselves and each other.