When Breaking and Entering Is The Only Option

When Breaking and Entering is the Only Option 

As a youth I was a thief. You may have noticed last month’s new cartoon strip The Chronicles of B; it’s based loosely on my own life growing up. Just like that cartoon I started stealing when I was relatively young. As I aged I soon began to recognize the anxiety that it both created and eventually soothed. It is a very powerful dynamic. I finally gave up stealing at about the age of twenty. Not because of the risk but because I broke into a home that fundamentally changed my life. It was the home of my soul. Truth be told, I had spent my years stealing and breaking into stores and such because I was searching for something soothing. I didn’t realize that the soothing I sought lay within me. From the point of that first break into the home of my soul, I stopped stealing from others and breaking into properties where I was not a welcome guess, but I had to continue breaking into my own home.

It’s interesting that in reality there is no security system surrounding my home. It is the easiest place in the world to break into. I only have to get quiet, sit still, breathe in and the door just opens wide, but for some reason I have to create these elaborate schemes to try to break in just to reinforce that there is actually something trying to keep me out. In truth, I keep myself out.

And why am I telling you this? It is amazing the anxiety I see in myself. When I receive a distressing phone call I become distressed. When there is a text with an element of anxiety in its content, I become anxious. When a person approaches me with fear, I become fearful. Wow…it is so very interesting to see. Especially when I am considered, even by myself as a pretty laid back, even keel, mildly reactive person.

I see so much fear, insecurity, and anxiety in the world because it exists within me. Every time I encounter an anxious therapist and wonder, “How in the heck could this person possibly do therapy?” I only have to listen to my own anxiety and fear. It’s the anxiety and fear that informs me that I am not good enough. When I look at this person and sense his anxiety I become fearful and anxious myself because I am. When I work hard to help therapists to see their own fear, to face their own shame and inadequacy, to be bigger than they’ve imagined, and they struggle I become fearful. I struggle to face my own. I struggle to be bigger than I’ve imagined. When I hear that a peer has been critical of my work I get defensive because I am afraid. I am not afraid of that person’s approval or lack thereof, I am afraid that I am locked out from a house that is unlocked. I am afraid that I can’t get in through a door that is wide open. I am my own fear. I fuel my own fire whether negative or positive, to burn alive, stressed out, and afraid, or to be warmed to the soul by its warmth and generosity.

So here I am again, a thief in the night. But now it’s different. I have one target and one target only and that’s the peace, riches, and comfort of my own soul. I’m gonna keep trying to break into this wide open house of glory until I can open my eyes and see that I never had to break in to begin with, it’s really not even dark. I’m really no thief in the night. I’m a blind man walking around with my eyes shut just believing it’s dark, believing I am being sneaky. I am only fooling myself. I’ve just got to open my eyes, walk up to the house, reach out for the door and go inside. Everything is waiting right there for me, it’s all mine!

I’m gonna keep trying to choose love. I hope you will too but then again that’s your house to break into not mine.

B.

Chief Love Revolutionary