Day 18: Irony
It wasn’t until grandma passed away that I realized my mom has never stopped believing in God.
We weren’t an obviously Christian family. If you came to our house and looked through our bookshelves, there was little evidence that any us had the faith.
My dad came from a strong Irish Catholic family and went to Catholic school. And that shaped him. But as soon as he left home he left the faith behind, never looking back.
Instead of church, on Sundays he used to go to the woods. He’d hike the forest paths, exploring the ridges and valleys of Oahu, settling down to meditate in quiet clearings by himself.
“Nature is my church,” he’d say, often referring to California’s Yosemite Valley as the grandest cathedral in the world.
Meanwhile on those Sunday mornings my mom would take me and my brother to Sunday school in the city.
Along with her grandparent’s, her parents were pastors in the Salvation Army.
After Sunday school, we’d join her for the main service, where my grandma and grandparents often led the congregation. It was a Japanese congregation, we’d sing Japanese songs to Japanese music. And instead of “God” we’d talk about “Kamisama.”
It was nice to spend time with my family like that, but I never enjoyed being there. Like my dad, I was more impressed by the outdoors.
So as I approached my 10th birthday, I started “sleeping in” on Sundays. While my mom prepared for church, I’d lay in bed, pretending to be asleep. I didn’t believe in God, and I didn’t want to spend half the day sitting still listening to my elders speak a language I didn’t understand.
And once I stopped going to church, I quickly abandoned — even rejected — the idea of God.
I remember as a teenager riding in the car with my mom and a friend. Somehow the conversation turned to religion, and I asked my mom “How can you believe in the stuff? It’s so dumb.”
Her reply: “I’m sorry you don’t believe in anything bigger than yourself.”
My mom kept her faith to herself after that. She didn’t speak of it anymore. And she stopped going to church. Her grandparents were too old to leave the house and her mom stayed home to care for them.
For the next ten years I all but forgot that had ever been a part of her life.
But when she called me last year to tell me her mom had passed away, her perspective brought it all back. “At least she’s not stuck in the bed anymore. She’s free now.”
Mom believes in Heaven, I realized, startled. Suddenly curious, I began to wonder: Does she pray? How often does she think about God? How much does her faith shape her life?
When I think about what it means to be sensitive, I think of being perceptive, awareness, being attuned to the less-than-obvious details of the world and the people around you. It means noticing and feeling.
To be insensitive is to be closed off, imperceptive, unaware. It means not noticing what’s going on inside, around or right in front of you — not sensing the tingling in your belly, that your hairs on standing on end, that the breeze has changed directions and the flowers are beginning to bloom, or that the person in front of you is feeling hurt or ignored.
It wasn’t until grandma passed away that I realized how insensitive I’ve been to my mom. That for more than half my life I’ve ignored, even ridiculed, something so deep and important about who she is.
What else have I missed? I’ve started wondering. What else about her have I been blind to? And who else in my life have I ignored?
One thing I’m starting to realize is that sensitivity and callousness go hand-in-hand.
Closing off is a natural response to being too sensitive. If we are too open… if we feel too much… and if we’re overwhelmed by that… we close off. To protect ourselves from further pain, we close ourselves off, stop feeling, stop noticing. We may still feel sensitive on the inside. And we may still be overwhelmed. But we stop being perceptive of the world and people around us, because we can’t handle it anymore.
That’s the conundrum of being sensitive. Too much of it, and we become the opposite. To shelter ourselves, we become hard, even as we are buffeted around by our feelings on the inside.
In a sad and ironic way, as a result of my sensitivity I leave the people in my life feeling unseen and unheard. And I’m sorry to have missed out on so much.
So my question now is: How do I become less sensitive on the inside, so I can be more sensitive to those on the outside?
That’s my goal for 2020.