Epiphanies {Part 2}
I had a couple epiphanies.
The first of my Epiphanies was discussed last week.
The second of my epiphanies was equally powerful.
With regard to my daughter’s game, Minecraft, as I said – it never occurred to me that there was more than one mode of play. There is a part of the game I have never seen, an entire story of which I know nothing.
There are heroes and monsters and forests and adventures; perhaps heartache and perhaps growth; perhaps even death.
As many hours as my child has spent on this game, I find it mind-boggling to realize I truly know nothing about it.
People, like games, have different modes.
When I asked my daughter why she never played on “Game Mode”, she responded that it was too scary.
Apparently you have to build houses and gather equipment in a specific time frame, before night falls and the zombies come to kill you. Well that makes sense; I don’t do well with that sort of game myself.
It was shocking to learn my daughter’s fear.
She was afraid of something I didn’t even know existed.
This person I would swear I know down to the minutest detail has sides of which I can never fully be aware. She is nine. She has entered what is referred to as the “tween” stage – between child and teenager. No longer a baby-kins, but not yet a young adult. A tiny person with ideas and fears and expectations of her own… even though these concepts are not yet fully developed.
My daughter, this being I carried inside my body and nurtured and loved and grew and birthed and fed and clothed and educated and entertained and offered to the world, is a virtual stranger to me, when all her secrets and modes and facets are taken into account.
And if this is true of my own spawn, it is surely true of those with whom I have not spent as much time.
We can only know a person based on the sides they choose to present.
“The Silence and the Scream”
- You see nothing but what I allow you to see, and my scream goes forever unheard.
And if they keep parts of themselves hidden, whether on purpose or without thought {as with my daughter’s admitted fear of “Game Mode”}, we will never know.
Somehow, today, that places everyone I know in a different light.
It’s as though I’d been walking the tunnel with only a candle to light the way, and suddenly, a switch was flipped, so that now I see a little more clearly than I did before. And the people standing in front of me, so one-dimensional before, have been rendered from coals into diamonds. Multi-faceted and shiny and secretive and full of life and with so much more to offer than I ever thought possible.
My mom has a saying that I never really understood until now:
“People are just people, you know?”
I always took this to mean that people have flaws and we should just accept and forgive them because that’s just the crappy way things are.
Now, I think maybe she meant something else entirely. Maybe she meant that people are crazy, unpredictable beings who all have nothing and everything in common, and you can’t know everything there is to know about them, so you might as well take the parts you DO know, and make the best of it, assuming good things exist on the bits you can’t see.
People are just people, you know?
They aren’t all good or all bad. They are just these strange, oddly-shaped individuals with lumps and bumps that go every which way. And no matter how much you love someone, you can never know everything about them.
With regard to my daughter…
…we have lots of years ahead to get to know each other. I look forward to the time we spend together. The biggest joy a mother can receive is when her child allows a peek inside her heart. Abbie lets me in quite easily right now. I know this could change over the coming years, so I’m just going to appreciate the hell out of these moments.
And if she wants to keep playing on “creative mode“, building and deleting and making art-for-art’s sake, well that’s just fine by me. I plan to keep engaging in my hobby, too {scrapbooking}. There is no reason for either of us to switch to “game mode” if we aren’t ready and willing. No reason to give up our hobbies to concentrate on our passions, and no reasons to treat our passions in as light a fashion as we treat our hobbies. No reason to show all our sides when the sides we currently reveal to each other work so well.
With regard to my mom…
And we aren’t currently on speaking terms, mostly by my own choice.
I keep viewing my mom through one single lens. One facet of the gem that she is. One side of the prism.
I think she views me the same way. And neither of us much likes what we see. We sit on opposite sides of the table politically and religiously, which means our morals and virtues are on extreme ends of the spectrum. This makes it hard to come together peacefully. We feel defensive of our perspectives, knowing before the other speaks that we will be judged, and harshly.
For myself, and for my kids, and for my sister and her family, I have got to find a way to see past all this. I need to find a part of my mom that doesn’t tick me off. And I hope she is interested in finding a part of me that doesn’t rile her up. I guess a phone call and visit is imminent in the near future. I broke it; it’s up to me to figure out how to fix it.
Epiphanies are easy.
Family is hard.
- Are you ever shocked at the things you learn about and from other people?
- How do you bridge the gap when controversy tears your family apart?
- What does the phrase “People are just people” mean to you?
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