Deborah Lipp

When you look within, you tend to move through layers. At first look, everything is fine. At second look, everything is hard. At third look, everything is soft.

Suppose you tell a barbed joke. First look, “Hey, it was funny. It didn’t mean anything.” Fine. Second look, “I’m angry and I was lashing out.” Hard. Third look, “I’m terrified and protecting myself with barbs.” Soft.

Last night I stayed fairly late at a party, despite being pretty exhausted. There were a number of different social groups at the party, but I was the last one there among my own social group.

So this morning I asked myself, why did I stay so late? The first answer was that it was a relief to be out of the house. I’ve been too much at home lately, too bored out of my mind supervising Arthur’s home studies. And hey, it was a long drive to get there. Fine.

The second answer was that it was my own ego. I am a competitive, and some part of my mind was treating it as a contest for affection, for being the best friend by staying the longest. Hard.

And finally I reached the part where I saw that I am afraid that I don’t know how to be a good enough friend, that other people are better at friendship than I am. That I am, as a friend, inadequate, and I was staying to compensate. Soft.

This is the nature of inner work. We resist at first because we know the hard part is coming. We don’t want to admit we have an ugly part of ourselves.

But we resist more powerfully because we know the soft part is coming, and we don’t want to admit we have a vulnerable part of ourselves. The hard part of us resists this most of all, and we’d rather stay in the anger and egotism and competitiveness and spite than go there, than be vulnerable and soft.

But there’s another truth, one we can reach when we spend time with the soft part, when we allow ourselves to have that knowledge and those tears. That is, we really are fine. You know what? I really am a good friend and I’m not inferior to others. I have flaws in how I manage my friendships, and because I am not afraid of the dark me, or of the vulnerable me, I am okay with acknowledging those flaws, and wishing I was a better friend, and trying to be. But if I take the plunge, and look three times, I can look a fourth time and say “I am fine as I am.” And I am.