A friend called to untangle the last interaction with her husband. It can help to let the scene stop ricocheting around your head and escape through your mouth.
Her husband had an inflated reaction to something their daughter did. They were buying candy and he had said the limit was a dollar. When the teller rang it up his little girl had a bit more and he was angry. My friend could not understand why it mattered.
I invited her to be curious. Perhaps it brought up a message from his own past, one he never quite resolved. His father had died when he was young and probably money was tight.
When the people we love do surprising things, our knee jerk reaction may be to get irritated. But there is another choice. We can be intrigued.
"That makes sense, that you would feel that way."
There have been times when those nine words have been the sweetest affirmation I could hear. Once I disengage from the repetitive loop telling me I am wrong to be sad or lonely or mad, I have my footing to chose differently.
A meditation tape I listened to years ago had a line that helped me not be a slave to those feelings.
"I have feelings, but I am not my feelings." I can change them, like a dirty shirt, or too small boots.
One time I told a friend about my disappointment around Christmas gifts. I was stuck in the mud of my own resentment. But she listened without judgment, and affirmed that it was not unreasonable to be disillusioned. It was as if the latch on my cage was released. I still believe things could have gone better but the sting was gone. It is just what happened.
The antithesis of curiosity is the belief that we already know all the facts. That seems unlikely in any scenario outside of a third grade math test.
Curiosity may have killed the cat but it brings new life to my marriage.
