The Assignment...

There are many, to be clear.  Many life assignments.  And we all get them but there seems to be one that is assigned to us all that we do a marginal job at completing.

That assignment is healing.

It seems, to me, this assignment presupposes all other assignments.  If we fail to understand and complete this assignment all other assignments in this life are kind of pointless.  Because the healing we need to do, will undercut everything else we attempt in this life, until and unless we do it.

So the assignment is pretty clear:  find out where you are broken and then take the steps to heal that which plagues you.

Simple, right?

And it is.  But not easy.  Which is why so many people choose to numb it, ignore it, proliferate it, fuck it, date it, eat it, shop it, smoke it, do it.  

We all spend so much time trying to avoid dealing with the healing we are not doing, that if we just put the effort into healing, we would be done already and moving into a healed and better version of ourselves.  Which alters our vibrational level and so we become something that attracts higher vibrational people.

Everyone wins.

So why do so many of us choose not to do the assignment?  Or just fail the assignment altogether?

Fear.  Ignorance.  Stubbornness.

But mostly, fear.

Somehow we grow up thinking that owning that which is ours to own is some admission of guilt, sin, badness.  So we avoid it.  And then the shit that fucked us up to begin with becomes our shame.  And shame will and can do a lot of things, but it is not really interested in healing.  Shame requires a lack of healing to remain in existence.  Healing kind of pops the shame bubble...so shame is very not interested in healing. And shame is LOUD and pervasive.

I believe we get our lifetimes to work out our stuff.  That is the purpose of a life.  To heal, and help others do the same.  To be an example of healing for others and to see others examples to assist us in our journey toward wholeness and completeness.

I feel like we misunderstand that assignment so often because the assignment is hard.  It will require a lot from us.  We can’t just check out with Netflix all the time, or mindlessly shop on Amazon, or get drunk or high every night.  Compulsive, addictive patterns are absolutely contrary action to completing the assignment, but to a great many of us, so much more preferable than doing the actual assignment.

I think assignment completion takes a great deal of fortitude and dedication.  I think the assignment requires a fearless inventory of your grosser liabilities as a going human concern.  I think this is not a great deal of fun.  

But, my own failure to heal that which plagues me only makes me wound others and give them more healing to do.  I see this most with my children.  All the ways I didn’t complete the assignment timely and the injury they sustained because of my own failure to heal that which fucked me up.

I will also tell you I was doing the best I could at the time.  But looking back now, I can see that I totally did not understand the assignment.  I thought I did but I didn’t.  There were years, most especially in my children’s younger years where I thought I was done, I thought I had tackled all my shit and was now, “healed.”  Fuck, was I WRONG!

See I think the assignment is a lifetime deal.  We are never done, until WE are done.  Sure there are resting places along the way where we can be involved in just enjoying life and not doing hard work at healing all the time.  There are respites along the way, but the assignment can never really be completed but it is the best use of life and living, to heal ourselves so that we may bring about more healing to the people we love, whilst also not causing more trauma along the way.

I had dinner with my son last night.  As I have written before, he and I have had our share of troubles.  Listening to him last night I could see how much my failure to understand the assignment hurt him, how much damage I did to him and his delicate little psyche because I so utterly failed to understand the assignment.

He had some pretty astute observations about me and my assignment failure (my words, not his) and he was pretty on point.  And my ability to see that he was right was some good evidence that I am, perhaps, currently understanding the assignment better than I have in the past.

I felt badly in the moment about how my lack of understanding led to more trauma in the world, that being his life.  But I also was able to hold forgiveness for myself because I know at the time I was giving it all I had, I just didn’t have the right tools to complete the assignment any better than I did at that time.

But today, last night, I had the tools.  I could listen.  I could let him talk and hear him.  He was passionate but not angry.  And he was pretty on target also...and I could hear that because I think, and I could be totally wrong, only time will tell, that I am currently understanding the assignment.

For me lately, the assignment is one I have to knowingly sign up for each morning.  Today is a day I will be asked to heal some new aspect of myself, some new part of me that I am only just coming to know.  It could also be the day that I am having to revisit old parts of me that I am really sick of attempting and failing to heal.  But the mission is the same no matter what the area of me we are covering:  to heal that which interferes with my ability to show up in this skin for myself and others with as much authenticity, love and self awareness as I can.

Healing is something that comes in degrees.  Some days I have only marginal market share, other days I am placing all of my money on black and spinning the wheel.  I think intention is important.  Setting the intention every day to heal some aspect of yourself that has previously gone unaddressed is pretty heroic and hard.  But it is the assignment regardless.

So today I accept today’s assignment installment.  I will do the work asked of me today to take what life brings to me and use it as a vehicle for healing.  I give myself a bit of latitude that I may not like it and it may ask me for things that I do not have to give today.  My only job on this whole healing, living assignment is to keep trying and not give up the fight.

Again...still.