Foundations or Scaffolding?
One may feel more important than the other for a solid structure, but is it really? And are they mutually exclusive?
As people, we want to have come from good foundations and want to give our children good foundations: safety, food, shelter, love - these things come in all shapes and sizes; then we have belief systems, family values and social/cultural heritages; then we have the ever-present, yet fleeting, moving target that is the present moment - our direct lived experience within a cultural, societal, global and personal context. These are not linear categories; they are just all the ingredients that make us up. None of these states are ever really still within, or without us. We can sit on our meditation cushion as still as stone and the internal riot continues its dance as does the air around us.
Whilst back in my day Andy-Pandy, The Clangers and The Banana Splits were our entertainment, children today may thrive on Iggle-Piggle, gently slide into Thomas the Tank Engine, before chatting with Peppa Pig, not noticing the gradual shift of need and attention. And without even noticing the shift, K-Pop Demon Hunters suddenly become the flavour of the month! And on it goes, our constant change in appetite. There is no way around this, so let’s ease off the criticism of parents and care-givers for those early years, for their moment-to-moment landscape was and is forever changing too and mostly, they did their best (unless they didn’t of course but that’s a different piece of writing). If we are constantly at odds with wanting parents/caregivers to be other than they were/are and yet cannot be, then we are going to hurt.
Instead: let’s notice our experience, name our shifts and changes; reflect on challenges and dilemmas; look back at the path we have created and walked upon so far and ask, does something need to change? Do we know what it is? Do we need help? Can we trust that we have everything we need to make the next shift in a more conscious way?
The saddest line I hear in the therapy room is, ‘I’m just getting through’. Is that how we want to make the journey from life to death - just getting through to the end of it? It is so hard sometimes when everything feels heavy, dark, and painful, it is really difficult to hold on and remember that there would be no dark without light, no fear without safety, and there would be point to uttering the word left, if there were no right alongside it; it would be meaningless.
In pain and suffering, ‘just getting through’ is courageous. It means we are putting one step in front of the other because that’s all we can do. But let’s not stay there too long. Be curious and notice tiny little changes: suddenly your ears have picked up on some background music and your heart has an ever so gentle momentary dance; or you tune into a bird twittering away as you walk to your work; maybe you catch yourself smiling at a random stranger. These moments are for us grownups to pay attention to, to be curious about, and to develop a trust that sand is shifting within us just by putting one foot in front of the other
Kids can’t yet reflect on a shift from Thomas the Tank to K-Pop and who would want a child to be that sensitive and obsessed with self anyway? But as adults, we have capacity, ability, and power, not to just get through, but when ready, to try and make our steps as deliberate as can be. We don’t have to force things, but we can oh so gently, quietly, compassionately, be with our steps to attend to the shifting foundations, and if we need a bit, or a lot, of scaffolding to hold us up along the way, then that’s okay. As such those deliberate steps may be helped from shifting the question, ‘What do I need?’ to ‘What is needed?’ This creates an opportunity for the situation to become a little more expansive, creative, deliberate, and then a more autonomous movement becomes possible.