One of the events which led up to my posts from thursday and friday was a conference Jung and I had with J and her teacher about the incident I wrote about on February 1st and she wrote about in her song, The Hypocrite. In many ways, it was a discussion between J and her teacher to which Jung and I were invited to listen. We wanted to both support J in helping her to get her story across to her teacher and to observe how her teacher went about resolving misunderstandings with her students. The insights we gained at that meeting could easily fill a week of posts, but one which struck me as particularly problematic was J’s teacher’s attitude towards “packaging” the conversation.

In order to keep a student “on topic,” she limits the boundaries a given conversation to staying within whatever she perceives as germane to the “package” of the story that the student began. If they begin by talking about something that happened this week, they have to stay within the narrow boundaries of that particular event, and they aren’t permitted to bring up anything else. If they begin talking about “Student A” then they can’t bring in “Student B.” They need to stick to the package. J’s teacher will say that she’s happy to talk about those “other packages” at another time, but not now. Now they need to stick to unpacking the one, single package solely about this week or Student A.

I understand where this technique came from. I often need to nudge, guide, push, and sometimes shove my children back out of a digression and into the story they began. It can become frustrating, especially when emotions start to run high, to have to keep track of when my daughters are giving additional, pertinent information, and when they’re drifting out of their story and into a general rant about what a jerk their “former friend” has become (for example).

However frustrating it may be, I need to allow my daughters some flexibility in telling their story because sometimes the key to understanding why they are so upset, is in one of these so-called digressions. Sometimes the only hope of my being able to help them, comes from listening to how my children see patterns of behaviors or progressions of relationships. And almost all of the time, my understanding benefits from piecing together as much context as I can.

Events are rarely isolated and don’t fit neatly into packages. The argument two friends have in math class may have its roots in something that happened in social studies. The frustration a child feels over being told to “lower her tone” may come from the fact that other kids get away with mean and selfish teasing all the time, and she gets in trouble for honestly expressing herself. The bullying that is spreading this year was probably running under the radar for many years before.

What happens to your day when you “wake up on the wrong side of the bed?” What if that same day you get a bit of praise from someone whose opinion you respect? How do you feel on the anniversary of the death of a loved one?

Life doesn’t come in packages; it’s all intertwingled. This is especially important to remember when considering both the big decisions and the big challenges in life. Take a step back. Now take another. Now close your eyes and keep your mind wide open. Use your imagination to help you see:

• Where did this truly begin?
• Where would you like it to end?
• Where are all the threads of the tapestry and what is the story they tell?

Life doesn’t come in packages. It comes in streams and forests; in oceans and continents; in souls and communities; in planets and galaxies. The walls and boundaries we put around the pieces of our lives are for the convenience of our anemic imaginations; they aren’t real.

Real life is messy and spills over into everything. And that’s something I love the most about being alive.