Learning to defuse his daughter’s tantrums taught Ty Phillips a surprising lesson about himself.
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Brynn turns around to face me, her little face wrinkled with anger. She stomps her feet in an act of defiance; an impulse to assert her young will over mine. “NO!” She screams at me. She has decided that what she wants to do is much more important than doing what I have told her she cannot do. Stomping her feet again for emphasis and breaking into a quivering-lipped whimper …”no,” she says again feebly. Her desperation is heart breaking. I kneel down to look at her eye to eye, trying to explain why she cannot cram her toys into the toilet bowl after she has peed in it.
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I kneel down to look at her eye to eye, trying to explain why she cannot cram her toys into the toilet bowl after she has peed in it.
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Her irrational impulse seems absurd to us, yet to her it feels much like our own compulsions. The diet that lasts only three days before we binge on snickers and oreo ice cream, the “just one more cigarette” for the 30th time, the heedless unprotected sex that sends us reeling the next morning that we may be a parent or have contracted a disease—when we look back, it all seems so absurd. Yet at the moment, we seemed to have no control. We stomped our feet in defiance over our will and gave free reign to our desires.
This isn’t an uncommon experience. I have often heard students say that they cannot just sit and watch their breath. The chaos of their own mind becomes a burden that is almost too much to bear. The quiet sets in and the anxiety and desperation we fight so hard to cover up takes front and center. The idea of sitting, alone in the quiet space of our own company is unnerving.
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Our urge to rebel is the fight to assert dominance over the idea of impermanence; this never ending cycle of change and upheaval.
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Our urge to rebel is the fight to assert dominance over the idea of impermanence; this never ending cycle of change and upheaval. When I was faced with my own morality, I created patterns that I felt would keep me safe—habits of where I would sit, what I would watch, how often I would move, what I would eat, say and think about. This obsessive pattern only shed more light on my desperation for control.
The first time I sat through a panic attack and just observed it, I thought I was going to die. The questions came flooding in: Is it my heart? Am I having a stroke? Will I see my daughters graduate high school? Is this going to hurt? Will they be OK if I die? There was no end to the reality of it; yet I sat, I watched and I observed without judgment.
The first time I let go and just watched my fear, my panic attacks almost stopped. My health concerns remained real yet the outcome was unchangeable. It is a reality none of us can escape from. All things are subject to change. Like all children we will bury our parents, and like all parents, we will fear for our children. What we do with these in between moments is what sets us apart.
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Like a child impulsively stomping her feet, we quickly raise a fist in anger, yet our will to rebel can only be met and released by a desire to help.
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Like a child impulsively stomping her feet, we quickly raise a fist in anger, yet our will to rebel can only be met and released by a desire to help. A willingness to help is rooted in the heart of compassion. True compassion is free of a sense of hand-fisted control over change. It is a strong hearted acceptance of simply what is, and what we can do within it.
I often still find the desire to rebel, but what I remember is the feelings I had while lying in the hospital. It was not a desire for control it was a desire to connect. So as I stand firm and stomp my feet, I can finally see not what is going wrong around me, but what I have left untouched within me.
Photo—Citril/Flickr
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