The Wu Li Masters

 "This is the message of the Wu Li Masters: not to confuse the type of dance that they are dancing with the fact that they are dancing."
 

It's been a hard  two weeks, folks.  My dear friend, Ann, fell outside my home and entered Harborview's ICU and I haven't been able to get her out of my mind. But this situation has truly been a hard two weeks for Ann and for Ann's wife, Jan, who has had to endure this pain, this agony, these decisions, this experience. I have "been there"in my own way  and remember my own world of experience, but I have not been able, this time,  to enter Jan's world of experience because my own reality handed me a different card. 

Two days after Ann's fall, my grandson became suicidal after being relentlessly bullied. for two months,  at his private school in Bremerton, and I have been doing everything possible to regain balance at this school; with the boys who had been doing the (outrageously damaging) bullying, and with my grandson's psyche and soul.  The latter, of course, has taken up most of my effort and my time.  No matter how hard it might be, no matter how terrible it might be, you must plot out your own territory.

Where is the map.  Where is the territory. What are my powers. Which powers do I use. I want to mangle. I want to kill. I am filled with anger and fear, they gnaw at me, but can either of these emotions help, in this situation? Knowledge; that is what I need. 1 need help. I call my friend Jane, who was a highly successful principal of a grade school for a long, long time. First step. Use what  Jane tells me. I call the Director of my grandson's school. I talk with him for an hour. I tell him what I know, what I am willing to do. Restraining orders. Police. Let him know. Bullying is illegal. Period. Once I know what is happening I can and I will take action. This is the map. This is the territory. I will do what I can do.

I track down a new therapist for my grandson. A therapist with more strength. A therapist with more knowledge. A therapist who will guide him better, ask more of him.  "You are thirteen, we cannot force you to come here," says the therapist, to my grandson. 

 "I know this," my grandson says, "but I know it is important."

I check in with my grandson twice a day. Hi. How are you. How'z it goin'. Better.
  
To know that this is your one precious moment, your one precious life, and that, ultimately, it is up to you. To know that, as the poet says, the road is made when we walk on it.

So much is up to my grandson.  Schopenhauer asked. "Can anything happen to you for which you're not ready?" Was he speaking about children, too?  We will never know.  As a therapist whose specialty is Women And Trauma, I have heard stories of such trauma dealt to children that grown men and women would not, I believe, be able to endure for one moment, were they to know ahead of time that they were asked endure such torturous situations. The children disassociated, of course; their central and autonomic nervous systems softened things and hardened others and allowed them to keep on living.  And then they paid.

Take this.
And this.
And this.
And this.

"I know this," my grandson says, "but I know it is important".

He is right.  Awful things happen unexpectedly. You are bullied for a year. It is seemingly unbearable. You want to hit back but you, the youngest person in the school, are also the largest person in the school, and you know that if you hit anyone, you will be the one in the most trouble. So you take it. You take it. You become angrier and angrier. You eat it, like a cake.

Good things happen unexpectedly. You tell somebody. Oh, finally. This starts the ball rolling. It's your mother. She tells somebody. They get involved. Maybe you matter. Maybe you matter a lot. You didn't think you did, now you do. It doesn't matter that you are big. Reporting isn't the same as tattling. It's okay. You have a right. You can breathe.   

"In the world of symbols, everything is either this or that.  In the world of experience, there are more alternatives available. This is how it is in the world of the Wu Li Masters."
- Gary Zukav