“I keep messing up plans, I keep thinking...”
“Keep thinking what?”
“I'm a piece of shit.”
“What? Why?”
“It's... it's just what my mind keeps repeating at me.”
“Is it trying to steer you away from something?”
“Yeah... From you.”
“From me?”
“Yeah, you and, everyone else. It doesn't want me to belong.”
“How come?”
“It's just... Look, I'm not good enough, okay? I'm not good enough to have friends?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don't deserve you.”
“Do you really mean it, or is it just more of that reflex?”
”...”
“Can we sit? We might want to take this slowly.”
”...”
“Pika, what happened?”
“I think... I think I got bullied, and I didn't really have any friends when I was younger... or at least it felt like I didn't have any.”
“But you did have them?”
“I... I did, yes. I remember times when I felt alone, but there were others where I was with my friends, when they even stood up for me. Why... why is my mind lying to me?”
“He hugs an arm around me. “Well, look at it this way, if your mind is willing to override the actual events in favor of the feelings, that means the feelings are more important than the events.”
“Are they? But what could be more important than.. the truth?”
“Facts are facts, but truth is subective, and there's an important part of your own truth that takes over the mere facts.”
“What could it possibly be?”
“You speak of deep wounds when you talk of these experiences. When you get to feel rejected, or abandoned, or betrayed, or put down, or humiliated. Those are powerful events in our lives, are they not? Enough to take over the mere facts.”
“They... they do for me, yeah.”
“That's because they are more important than the facts. They shape your own story more than the facts. Each wound has a profound effect in us. Tell me, how does a wound feel?”
”... Painful?”
“Exactly, and what does pain lead us to do?”
”...To stay still and protect the area?”
“Yes, and what about long-term?”
“To not injure the same area again.”
“Yes, to change our behaviour accordingly. Pain pushes us to change, and loudly so, in order to avoid repeat pain.”
“So the way that I feel...”
“You see how you are pushed to segregate yourself? To retreat from life? To push yourself away from the idea of having friends, lest bad consequences arise? That is the first phase of pain, when you want to protect yourself and stay still as it pulses raw in you.”
“But it's been so long!”
“Emotional pain doesn't fade on its own. Physical regeneration is an unconscioous process, but for emotions, that's a more participatory process. This healing is our responsibility, and we are called to partake in it.”
”...That blows.”
He laughs. “It's not pleasant, but that it takes such prominence in our mind means that it's a very important part of our development.”
“But why couldn't it be automatic like we heal from physical wounds?”
“That is the prerogative of angels, of those without free will. But here, these matters are left in our hands, in the name of giving us the freedom to walk our path.”
“What bullshit!”
He laughs. “It is our lot, in any case. Now, what lies on the other side of these wounds? What sort of scar tissue would paper over a wound such as these?”
“Well, if the wound is emotional, it leads to motion, then the fix would be... some sort of behaviour?”
“Precisely. And, we've already established how these wounds are not about external events, correct? They may trigger depending on what happens outside, but they're more about anything internal than external.”
“So they're about me.”
“Yes, they're a projection of the ways in which we have not built a solid foundation for our happy existence. After all, we feel sometimes that the world rejects us, correct?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“What would happen instead if you didn't reject yourself? If you embraced yourself fully as you are?”
“Then... I would be more confident, and I wouldn't... care as much, if someone else didn't like me or wasn't nice to me.”
“That's it exactly. And what about the others? What if you didn't abandon yourself?”
“Then I would stay very close to me, very...lovingly? I would forgive myself and it would be okay for me to be, because I would love myself, and I wouldn't treat myself like shit sometimes, I would just keep myself in my own embrace.”
“Very well. And what could you do to avoid the world from betraying you?”
“Apart from running away or controlling it, right? It has to be something internal... What if I just understood it?”
“Precisely. When you understand something, it will not behave in ways you find confounding, even if it may still surprise you. Then, what's the alternative to feeling that the world is unjust?”
“Feeling that is it just? Even against direct experience? That takes... a sort of faith in the world.”
“Yes, faith is precisely it. And then, what could prevent you from feeling humiliated?”
“Oh, I don't think I can do anything about that one. If I screw up, then I screw up, right?”
“It's not about making mistakes, it's about the feeling of humiliation that happens.”
“Well, if I make the same mistake several times in a row, that's gonna happen regardless, isn't it?”
“Mhm, and what would prevent you from making the same mistake in a row?”
“Learning from my mistakes?”
“And what do we call, the accumulated learning from our mistakes?”
“Wisdom?”
“Very well.”
“So these emotions...”
“Open them. Stay with them. Live with them. They will tell you what you have to do, they will tell you where you have to go yet. Welcome them as our messengers. The worse they feel, the greater their urgency.”
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome.”