Telling that the chicken is off is easier than telling if the person is!
Saturday 12th September 2020
I was walking back and forth to the kitchen cupboard and I could smell something not quite right. I notice, I then don’t pay attention until after a while I think, “That’s not just me there is a smell.” It smelled of rotten potatoes. I knew that smell as I had found the source of ‘a bad smell’ a few weeks ago, it was a rotten potato. My latest smell was not quite a rotten potato but potatoes that needed freeing from the plastic bag in which they were held.
Later I keep smelling something not quite right in the fridge. I deposited anything I thought was off in the bin the other day. It is not me that lets these things go off I am too frugal to allow anything to go to waste but I don’t tend to eat butter and margarine anymore. I do wonder why there are so many butter and margarine in the fridge anyway? I know T just buys without thinking she may already have it.
It is that chicken she bought the other day. True she decides to do a massive cook or bake which is good but once the moment is gone the chances are what remains will remain in the fridge until I smell something not quite right. It is that chicken. I don’t tend to eat chicken anymore. If it was cooked up I would because I am frugal ( as I said) but it is not and it is smelling. I doubt myself. I don’t like to throw anyway other peoples stuff just because I think it is off but each time I open the fridge my confidence is growing, “ That chicken is off it is going into the food waste bin outside.”
I don’t notice smells usually until something doesn't smell right. The truth is I do smell always it is just I am so familiar with it it is the norm. It comes into its own when what is the norm is no longer the norm.
So what if our others senses are like that? Well, they are that’s why I started wearing reading glasses last year when the eyes were no longer seeing the small print of my pocket-size Gideon bible. Or when also last year I started feeling pain in my feet. Too much walking from home to the station and back (it is 3 miles each way). Now the walking is curtailed.
Hearing is an interesting sense as we hear the sound but it is also attached to feelings. I recognise the sound of a dog barking but do I recognise that is the sound of someone being constructive or do I hear the sound of someone being destructive?
The recognition of sounds come from our learning. As a kid, we hear the dog making noise and someone tells us that is a dog barking. When we hear it we think, “That is a dog barking.” Then it gets complicated with humans. Mummy or daddy or both are shouting. Does that shout mean, “ Hey I’m over here you haven’t seen me” or “ Go you can win the race” or “ I’m not happy with you and by using the volume of my voice I am going to cause your ears to hurt and probably your emotions too.”
Then there is context so maybe we need to hear the shout to stop us from hurting ourselves, “Stop!” Maybe we have done something that isn't good so we need to know this is serious and they are not happy with us. The sound conveys a message but also an emotion. Then we feel as well as hear, ashamed, sorry, embarrassed, angry, remorseful or put down.
The difficulty comes if we are shouted at because of the other’s own pain. We get confused as we haven’t worked out is it their emotion or mine, we feel it so we think it is ours. We feel bad, we feel guilty but actually it is not ours it is theirs. The problem, who is there to save a kid from wrong learning?
So this kid equates sternness or ‘You are the problem’ or ‘You are the cause of this problem’ with ‘You have done something wrong because there is something wrong with you’. Do you see the difficulty? There may be nothing wrong with the kid or the adult kid it may be the person who is making the assertion who has the problem. Then the question of power comes into it. Are the two equals? Or can one enforce their view on the other?
Often the adult kid will have to submit to the voice of the other in such situations. So it is about dealing with that. It helps to have an awareness in order to separate it away from oneself, “ This conversation may be sounding like a putdown but it may not be a putdown”, “Could you repeat that?” “Tell me that sounds like this is that what you mean?”
If it is the person’s problem that they are offloading onto you recognise it for what it is and step back from it. Do not attach it to yourself.
So getting back to those smells if it doesn’t smell right it probably isn’t. With hearing the words of humans it is a little more complicated you are likely to have to check back if what you heard is what they intended.
Best day,
g
