I have learned that the best kind of friend is the one who not only can weep with you when you weep, but can also genuinely rejoice when you rejoice, just because they value you.
I have also learned that I am happiest when I have the opportunity to be that kind of friend to someone else.
When we are not able to weep with or rejoice with someone, it is often because we are too invested in our own story to see anyone else’s. This is very normal because being invested in our own story is how we survived childhood. It is why we cried when we were born. We needed to be the center of our own universe because if we weren’t, we would die. Our nervous system told us that fact long before there was enough activity in our brains to understand what was happening. This is the very definition of a primordial existential crisis.
If there was not someone else that valued us enough to make us the center of their universe as well for a few years, we would have died or at least become very dysfunctional as an adult. We would have either learned that we had no value as a person, or we would have had to inflate our value to ourselves enough to overcome the lack of value we felt inside. Either way, we would not develop a sense of safety in being able to see someone else’s pain or pleasure without comparing it to our own experience. Their experiences would inevitably lead us back to our own.
It is essential for a child to be egocentric and to some degree, we all need to continue to be vested in our own interests enough to insure our own wellbeing. We are a little like a vinyl pool that has a rather flimsy plastic frame to support it. Our early experiences of being valued or not valued enough are like the garden hose used to fill the pool the first time in the summer. If there isn’t enough water pouring into the pool fast enough, there is not enough pressure to keep the walls of the pool in place. Sometimes, one side of the pool collapses enough that all the water flows out of it and floods the yard, and the child is left with a collapsed pool and no way to refill it without help to put the walls back in place. Just as there needs to be a reasonable amount of water in the pool for it to be functional, there must be enough internal value infused in a child for them to grow to be a functional adult.
Sticking with this metaphor, as the summer wears on and the child grows up, the water must be maintained. Debris needs to be removed regularly. Some type of cleaning agent must be administered. Additional water needs to be added. All these things maintain a healthy environment for an enjoyable life experience.
If there was scant water put in at the beginning or if it became contaminated early on, it will be difficult to maintain the internal health of the pool until the child grows up enough to do the maintenance for himself. That can take a lot of rebuilding and retooling if things didn’t go well at the beginning. Occasionally, the plastic frame itself has some challenges. It is never nurture vs nature. It is always nurture and nature together. If nature gives someone a plastic frame that is missing some parts, their may always be challenges to overcome, regardless of the care taken to fill the pool.
There are times when the pool frame gets assembled and is standing up, looking like it is filled with water even though it is empty. The walls appear to be standing firm, but whenever someone gets close enough to see that there is nothing inside, there is sheer panic. Rage, arrogance, contentiousness, grandiosity, hyper-criticism of others, belief system rigidity and an inability to handle any kind of feedback from others are all strategies to keep people far enough away so to not see that the pool is actually empty. If anyone gets too close, the walls may collapse completely. At other times, water has been administered, but holes have been poked in the vinyl to the point that the pool cannot hold enough water to maintain the structure. Both conditions can only be remedied through relationship, but tragically, both tend to reject the very thing that could save them. People with that can never be filled will always be fragile unless they can get someone to help them repair what went wrong.
We all have holes in our vinyl lining and leaves in our filters to some degree. Most of us did not get our pool sufficiently filled or maintained in childhood and will need to do that work for ourselves as adults. If we can do it, if we can maintain our personal pool sufficiently, we can be available to provide relief and refreshment for others without feeling diminished ourselves. We can weep or rejoice wholeheartedly with others because we have internal resources to draw from so we do not fear becoming irrelevant.
For me, repairing the holes in my liner, recognizing the missing pieces in my frame and cleaning out my filters made it possible to fill my pool up enough to be structurally sound. I work hard to maintain the water clarity and PH balance; “balance” being the operative word here. Understanding this concept was life-changing for me and finally allowed me to stop feeling empty and defended inside. It is well worth the work in the journey toward wholeness.
