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May 4, 2008
Packing Pickles and Problems
By Noah ben Shea
Doctors say there is enough salt in one pickle to give us all the sodium we need for a year. I'd like more years, and so I consume fewer pickles. But this is a story I still gnaw on over the years. It is a story my father's mother told over and over. And over and over. When I was younger I thought this was just the malaise of her advancing age. But it wasn't. She was simply hoping we were listening.
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I recently experienced a presentation by Noah Ben Shea at a conference title Fearless Living, sponsored by the Omega Institute. I invited him to post some of his writing here on OEN. We'll be publishing several of his life blogs. He prefaced them with a note:Dear Reader,
Without wanting to sound like Lincoln at Gettysburg, I have passed three score in my years. Much of what I have seen I never noticed. A great deal that I did notice, I now notice I did not really see.
When I was younger I swam through a world which seemed to expand endlessly. Now that I am drawn closer to my mortal horizon, I discover I am in water which is deeper than I have ever known. Life we learn is an experience at sea, of storms above and below the surface, of breadth AND depth.
"We are islands in a common sea,"- wrote Anne Lindbergh. And she is right. Much of what we experience is common to all of us. However, how each of us experience is uncommonly unique. To see the common in an uncommon way reminds us that each moment is an original. And so is each of us.
The clock is ticking. The time to take a look around is now. It is not now or never, but now is better than later. No matter how young we are, it is later than we think. No matter how old we are, it is never too late until it is. An eternity is any moment opened with patience.
I have been writing for almost forty years. On a good day that means I get to spend several hours by myself in a small room. When someone once asked my son what his father does, he answered: "My father types."-
What I "type"- are books. In this process my mind's eye has stared at everything from family, faith, and failure to work, will, and working-out. What I have found, on reflection, is that the most passing of incidents are not incidental, and no matter the object of my attention it is all finally a lesson if I am paying attention. Every perspective has a bias. Mine is to hope and prayer. I believe we are better for looking to the positive and letting what is less find us. Prayer, I have found, is a path where there is none.
Though life has much to teach us, the tuition is steep and in the main we pay with our emotions. Across time each of us will have our heart filled and broken. Sometimes a little of both at the same time. Regardless, our heart knows what our mind only thinks it knows. And love is a lens worth polishing if we would look at life.
The character traits required for both learning and loving are honesty, compassion, faith, and humor. Hopefully you will find these qualities framing the work you now hold. While often the wisest things said are those things left unsaid, at the end of each chapter are a few thoughts from others as wisdom is wiser for listening to others.
Life is a lesson in process and about process. It is an adventure in learning as heart warming as it is heart wrenching. Herein are my field notes. What binds us one to the other is not what we look at but how we look at anything. Enjoy the view!
"...that is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood your whole life, but in a new way."-
- Doris Lessing
Peace on your path,
Noah
"Our own burdens weigh less
when we listen to what is weighing on others."-
Doctors say there is enough salt in one pickle to give us all the sodium we need for a year. I'd like more years, and so I consume fewer pickles. But this is a story I still gnaw on over the years. It is a story my father's mother told over and over. And over and over. When I was younger I thought this was just the malaise of her advancing age. But it wasn't. She was simply hoping we were listening.
The story goes that two or three times every year in the mid-summer, my grandmother, and other ladies in the neighborhood, would gather at one of their homes to pack pickles. They each brought a bushel of cucumbers, dill, salt, bay leaves, jars, and their troubles.
They always gathered at different people's homes but always around a large table. Each of them would unload their bushel baskets setting the ingredients before them. And then they would unpack their problems.
In turn and with respect, each of the women would begin to talk about what was wrong in their life. Who was sick. Who was still single. Who was getting older. Who hadn't slept with her husband. Who wished she hadn't. What couldn't be whispered on street corners found its way to the table. We are all gasping to breathe, and here there was air time. Safe air. The tone was less gossip than confessional. The listening done with an ear to hear, to help. And no matter what was said. No matter the shouts of telling silences. A promise went into every jar with the pickles. A promise not to tell.
The conversation would last most of the afternoon and was punctuated by sips of hot tea from old jelly jars. Heads nodded with understanding as burdens were unpacked and pickles packed. Eyes rolled with disbelief at stories which would never leave the room. "Please God,"- they would nudge each other, "don't show me what I can bear."-
At the end of the day, the women would stand and arch their backs. They would wash the coarse salt from their hands. They would slowly load their listening and jars of pickles back into the bushels they brought. Each of them would offer the others a feel of how heavy their bushel was. And then they would go home staggering under their load. Each with their own bushel. Each a queen carrying her burden with bearing. Each thinking of what she had heard.
At this point in the story my grandmother would lift her eyebrow and wag her finger so the lesson was not lost. Spirit to spirit, I want her to know I got the message. Caring impacts what we are carrying.
Every one of the women had arrived at the afternoon feeling weighted by her burdens. And then, each of them had heard the load that the others carried. Each of them had felt the weight of the other's bushel. And each had gone home thankful to be lugging only their own troubles. Thankful for what was theirs. Even the anguish, and the aches. The load had shifted. Their lives seemed lighter without weighing any less.
We offer others a chance to lighten their load when we say little and listen loudly. We learn a great deal about life and its burdens when we quietly help others to unpack theirs. Our own burdens weigh less when we listen to what is weighing on others.