What's going on here?

            I used to really be annoyed when people would talk about abstractions and not give the details of what was bugging them or going on.  Like my friend Suzie, who would say things like, “I was very challenged by a situation last week but I called in my higher self and am feeling better now simply being with what is.”   

            Like, HUH?  What the heck does any of that even mean?  What about the fire? The tears? The eating of carbohydrates?  I wanna know the details, like, what situation?  Who screwed her over, who stole money, who didn’t return her call (even after everything)? Is someone dying? Dead? Was her house being foreclosed on? Did her colorist turn her hair orange? Did she get discovered in her boyfriend’s brother’s bed, or his sister’s bed? Get un-invited to something?  Wardrobe malfunction?  What?  What?

            And it’s not prurient for me to need the specifics, it’s because the specifics give the texture.  Without the specifics I can’t connect it or relate it to my own life.  And I also don’t know how to connect to the other person without specifics.  If it’s all just platitudes and generalizations it feels like a speech rather than a conversation.  Like statutes are inspired by case law, and the cases are where the human details are, the facts that give the deeper insights and explain why we need the law, what it’s for.  I’d read a bunch of cases, the stories, but a book of statutes – no way.  Dry.

            So I’m that pushy person who says, “What happened?”  Or, if I’m getting that call when the person is still in it, in the middle of the emotional hijacking, I’ll be like, “What’s happening?”  The facts are the salvation, the path to okay-ness.  The catch is that when I’m in the emotional chop it can be really hard to grab onto what’s actually happening, what are the facts?  I have to kind of imagine myself as someone else, and ask myself, “Ok, how would a person who felt completely loved, safe, and protected view this situation?  How would I see my situation if I felt completely valuable, worthy, and secure in my needs, desires, hopes, and fears?”

            What’s going on here?  What are the facts?  And so that’s my current de-fogger of choice, this imagining of what it would feel like to be that person, that loved, safe, and protected person in the world and then act from there.