July 2020
by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M.Couns., PhD
It’s nice being warm. Too much of my life I’ve had the silly idea that I have to be brave, brave enough to bear the cold, and as I think on this, I realize that with that idea came a tendency not to discard things, just in case I’ll need them later on. How are these two ideas connected, I wonder?
My mother was Russian-Estonian and half my family are Russian-Estonian, with a tendency to hoard and hold things close to ourselves as though to protect against the cold, all the while bravely putting on a firm resolve to walk hard against the iciness in light clothing. I saw it in my Estonian aunt and my cousins a few years ago on a visit my brother and I did to that part of the world in their winter. They all had that glint in the eye of resolve.
I watched them put their walking clothes on and it seemed to me that they were not really dressed for snow and ice – and it was freezing out there, but out we’d go, and begin walking, fast. We walked in the snow fields, past the ski jumps; we hurried past the kindly lit, and probably warm, cabins; we just kept on walking. I, in a very familiar way, held in my shivers, and just sought to keep up.
So here I sit now, snug in new trackie pants and in awe of warm legs. Who would’ve thought! Interestingly, but not so much, in light of my growing awareness, this comes amidst a house clearing where boxes of things and papers have been cast into bins and given away. The family psyche is getting a clean out.
How many other familiarly held ideas do we have, behaviours, cultural ideas, just the stuff we traditionally do, that take years of shedding? It’s a useful exercise doing what I’m doing now, writing down the little bursts of insight. I had never put together the two ideas described above, till now, sitting, as I am, feeling cozy and warm.
I’ve written frequently about the importance of connections with one another for good mental health, but now I want to talk about the importance of connecting with oneself. Doing this is ultimately caring for oneself. Christianity only gives lip service to this in the phrase, ‘Love thy neighbour as thy self’, because they also talk a lot about selfless giving. Buddhism, on the other hand, recognizes that the idea of compassion includes oneself in the act of having compassion towards others. Loving is giving and receiving at once in a crux of connection.
What do I mean ‘connecting with oneself’? Aren’t we ourselves whatever we do? This is true, we are ourselves whatever we do, but much of what we do is out of awareness and we frequently react to certain things, things other people say, or situations, with feral aggression and blind self-hatred. If we are going to be kind to ourselves, we’ll need to understand ourselves better and be less reactive. Me, being cold in winter, and quietly and interiorly shivering is me not being sufficiently conscious of the indoctrination of my family-borne idea that suffering is good and natural. I am not the suffering of impoverished Russia and downtrodden Estonia, I deserve warmth.
Connecting fully to oneself is emerging through the fog of disconnection and being able to choose wisely who else to connect with. Again, this is something I am still learning about and in learning, I am better able to pick my causes as well as my connections.
Many people think that looking after oneself is selfish and uncaring towards others. Nothing could be further from the truth. Self-care is not egocentric, it is simply looking after oneself as we would care for another loved person or animal. Self-care recognizes that any love we have for another is really the same as the love we give ourselves. When St. Francis called his body, Brother Ass, this was not to beat himself up, but to nurture the beast that he knew he was. We need taking care of and when we look after ourselves, we are better able to care for others. Care goes both ways.
