How to Dispose of a Feeling (written 1/15/08)

Hi all you great people. This week's NEWS is about How to Dispose of a Feeling and T.I.A.A. (=Throwing It All Away. I've written about this before). Join me, join me, join me and let's find out where we can go next.

The other day, Sawyer received his first package from Lego Brickmaster. This is something for which my parents signed him up - as a birthday gift - something he desperately wanted. Every two months, Lego Brickmaster sends him a small build-able toy in the mail. He also receives a copy of the Lego Magazine. So, when he received it, he was very excited. Inside the padded manila envelop was also a letter (quickly thrown aside) and two five dollars-off coupons, brought to me with many fervent questions. He wanted to know how they work and when we could use them. After explaining that they were for on-line purchases only (so we couldn't use them in the store), I mentioned that they have expiration dates on them, but that the expiration dates are not for a long time (one lasts almost a year).

His interest in the coupons died down to a dull roar until the next morning, following a discussion he had with Max, unwitnessed by me. Later, when I launched an investigation as to why my youngest son had traipsed outside in his pajamas, barefoot, and left a cardboard shipping box with the coupons inside it on the doorstep of our neighbor's house, I discovered the nature of their exchange.

Turns out Max had shared his experience of once receiving like coupons. Apparently, he had waited so long, that the expiration came and went and he was no longer able to use the coupons by the time he wanted to. Hearing this story, Sawyer became alarmed. "What if," he worried, "this happens to me?" And he cooked this idea until he soon came to the point where his concern over the coupon expiring before his desire was met became unbearable. He had to get the coupons out of his sight in order to end the torment of this possibility.
After sending him back out to retrieve the package of confusion and garbage he'd left for our innocent neighbor, I had to stop and think.
Why hadn't he just thrown them away? After all, using the trash can is faster than delivering a package.

But the thing is, Sawyer didn't actually want to extinguish the coupons and their potential for getting something he wanted, he simply wanted to dispose of the FEELING of fearing he wasn't going to be able to get what he wanted. So, the best he could come up with was to safely package and abandon them - like a baby left on someone's doorstep - and hope they would be cared for and come to no harm. Somewhere inside he knew he was seeking relief not from the coupons, but from his own problematic thinking. In this light, the garbage would have put much too much of a final end to something that wasn't even the actual problem.

When Max was very young, I noticed a pattern in his behavior that was to endure throughout the years and went like this: something went wrong; something happened he didn't like; he felt something he didn't like feeling, and then he would, what I would later term : T.I.A.A. (which stands for Throw It All Away). I can recall his being around five years old and very upset with me over something ( I cannot remember the specifics) and wanting control over the situation - control that I seemed to have taken. In his fierce and determined little hand was a delicious chocolate chip cookie that he had wanted very much. As he argued his point vehemently, I remember him opening the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink and threatening to throw his cookie away. It made me crazy at the time: why would he throw away something he wanted?

Perhaps he too was looking for a way to dispose of, not that great cookie, but how he was feeling. And the quickest thing, for Max, seemed to be to Throw it All Away. In other words, if there was no tangible item in sight involved in the current conflict, he would seek out anything he had ever wanted and look to throw it away. I have witnessed this impulse in him many times, as he marches through the house with his box of game-boy games and paraphernalia, on his way to the garbage or ebay in his dramatic but erroneous effort to get rid of WANTING in general.

And he wants to get rid of wanting because he believes he has witnessed evidence that says: You Can't Have What You Want and You Don't Have the Power to Create It. And there is nothing harder on us than wanting something and thinking we can't have it. And in many of us the impulse to throw away or ignore anything we want can become strong in order to try to squelch and be done with the torment of wanting in doubt and fear.

Our lives are filled with evidence of having things we want; they surround us, but we must allow ourselves to have and feel having them. And in that having and appreciation, comes the sense of power that both Sawyer and Max and I seek - the knowing we can create whatever we want.

So, enjoy the cookie, and hold onto that coupon. You might already actually have what you want or be able to get it sooner than you think.

Hope you're all great.
Lots of love.
All is Well,
Jen