Hurt and Getting Hurt 1[1]
Reality is always kinder than our thoughts about it.[2]
I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was on Boterdiep in Groningen, somewhere in the nineties. I was walking there with my boyfriend and we were arguing. I felt confused and especially deeply hurt by the things he said.
Then, suddenly, the fog lifted and it became clear to me. Why hurt? Yes, I heard his words. He blamed me for something he thought I had done or said – I don't remember anymore. And I was sure I hadn't meant it that way. That was very clear to me. So: why did I feel hurt? Because he thought that was the case? And because, as a result, he felt a strong emotion, anger, and expressed it towards me? I saw very clearly that it was his business what he thought and felt. My business was whether I wanted to take personally how he interpreted my actions. And I noticed that, as soon as I did, I promptly felt hurt.[3]
I instantly became calm. I saw that he had a problem, which essentially had nothing to do with me. He simply believed what he thought and felt. That can happen. It often happens to me that I believe my thoughts and emotions and therefore cannot see the bare facts. By the way, a beautiful expression in this context, 'bare facts'. That means events that are not clothed in our stories and not colored by our emotions.
The special thing was that I didn't have to do anything anymore. The urgency to say something back, to defend myself, had disappeared. I could see his anger as a heavy rain shower passing by. And I had put on my umbrella of clear insight. So, as we continued walking, I could let him vent without getting wet myself – read: hurt. And later, when the sky had cleared for him, I could calmly explain how that event, which had made him so angry, had taken place from my perspective, and that I also understood his perspective. And then he could hear that I really hadn't meant it that way, and he was willing to see through his own assumptions that had triggered his anger.
Since that aha-experience, it has become my habit to always first look at my own fog when I feel hurt again. The fog of emotions and stories that my personality automatically starts spinning around an event that affects her. I noticed that feeling hurt for me is directly linked to my personality's wounded pride: 'that's not like me, how can the other person think that?' And that pride is the first filter I put up between me and the bare facts. Because then I can no longer see what-is unbiasedly, but I look through the foggy lens of my hurt.[4] And that fog evokes more stories and emotions in me, all of which confirm that I am not like that, that I don't do that, that the other person has betrayed my trust, my friendship. And if I automatically believe all that, I don't have to examine myself further, let alone ask the other person for feedback. No, then I start accusing her. In other words, then I get into her business instead of staying in mine and doing my 'homework.' After all, it's their fault.[5] 'It's the other person who hurt me.' Oh yeah?
No one can hurt me. That's my own work.[6]
Words fail to express what a relief it is every time I see through this fog. At that moment, I have direct access to the peace of my heart, which intuitively knows that no one can hurt me. The heart that perceives, sees clearly what is, and does not take anything 'personally,' let alone defend itself. The heart that lovingly distances itself from its own personality and stays closely connected to it. The heart that flawlessly sees how I hurt myself by blindly believing in the truth of my own assumptions – my expectations, my ideas about how I am and how the other person is (or should be), my beliefs about what is good and bad/wrong, my wishes, my desires, my hope – without examining whether they correspond to the bare facts. All those spins, steeped in emotions, create the drama of feeling hurt. With all its consequences. Consequences that always result in conflict and separation, instead of love and connection.
This is my secret, and it's very simple: Alleen met je hart kan je goed zien.[7]
[1] This is the first blog on the theme of hurting and being hurt. The next one will address the question of whether I can hurt someone. And who knows, there may be more blogs on this theme to follow. There are deeper layers of insight currently unfolding within me. The catalyst for this is the fact that I recently deeply hurt a dear friend because I acted from my personality rather than from my heart.
[2] Byron Katie, Amerikaanse wijsheidsleraar, bij wie ik zeven jaar in de leer ben geweest. www.thework.com
[3] Making the distinction between 'my business' and 'your business' is an insight from Byron Katie that has brought me a lot. See my book The Flower, appendix 1.
[4] Eva Wolf, The Flower (2022), page 507
[5] Ibid, page 540
[6] Byron Katie.
[7] This is what the Little Prince says in the book with the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.