Kavos

Honor

If you were raised in a home based on biblical teaching, you may have heard the phrase “honor your father and mother”. How can naming the impact of their abuse, neglect, ignorance, and failures honor them?

The translation of the Hebrew word “kavod” is honor. It means importance, weight and heaviness in addition to glory and respect. It is a brilliant reflection of the harmony and disharmony of relationship with others and with yourself.

When you have a primary caregiver who is attuned to you and nurtures the unique ways you explore and challenge and engage the world, they become an integral part of the creation of the musical score of life. This does not mean perfection. There will be dissonance AND there will be an ability to hear the wrong notes, so correction is possible.

Without this attunement, you had to look at the notes your parents were playing to see which ones you needed to play next. Maybe you needed to be silent or become the conductor. Maybe you needed to fight, and percussion was your orchestral section of choice. In the current nomenclature, what insecure attachment style are you; secure, avoidant, anxious, or disorganized? These are simply ways to help you understand how you move in relationship based on how you perceive the world.

In this context, you honor your parents by giving weight to the impact they had on your life. Sometimes this means understanding how you learned how to live with their limited emotional capacities. This means connecting to the strength that got you this far. Honoring the unique ways you were meant to challenge, explore and engage the world. This process is facilitated by discovering, acknowledging and then releasing the parts standing in the way. Those Survival Parts (see my blog on Survival Parts) have been there to take care of you. They won’t know when they are no longer needed until you believe they are no longer needed.

There are many ways to learn how to write your own music. I encourage to you find as many as you need. Counseling, coaching, mindfulness practices, yoga are just a few of the ways to connect to real self. You can start by just humming!

Have you had the experience of watching a movie in 4D? I didn’t even know what that meant when I walked into the theater. I said a small “huh” when I sat down and saw a button on the seat that said I could turn the water on or off.  

Turns out, in case I am not the only one who didn’t know, 4D means you get to experience more than just watching the film. The chair moves and undulates synchronized with the action on the screen. A slight breeze blows in your face when you are at “higher altitudes”, and during the fight scenes invisible fists pound your back. Oh, and the spray was a slight mist in your face when it rained. 

I couldn’t help but think how we sometimes live life in 4D; how we sit back and let life happen to us; how we let external experiences define what or how we feel; how we sometimes disconnect from life and watch what is happening as if it is on a movie screen with an automated seat. 

This is not to say that life doesn’t throw punches or knock the breath out of us. Sometimes the last thing we want to do is feel. What is your numbing tool of choice? Do you prefer alcohol, television, incessant activity, invulnerability, or…………? Whatever you choose, it also prevents you from experiencing joyous color and the chance to twirl and sing or quietly savor the words of Socrates or the best trash novel ever. 

In order to feel or do any of these things, we need to be willing to do all of it. We get to experience the velocity of the water that assaults us when we don’t have an on or off button on our own seat of life. In the other moments, we get to celebrate joy, happiness or occasionally just relief. We get to cry or shout in both times of pain and joy. 

 

 

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