Infant parallels: Hitting ourselves in the face 🥊

Our daughter doesn’t yet have control of her arms, so she occasionally hits herself in the face. She HATES it. The most.

I can’t help but contemplate how much this parallels our most hated experiences. How much are we creating our dramas (with our projection)? Consider a manager accusing her team of underperformance, who hasn’t clearly communicated her expectations or provided the necessary support. Or consider feeling low self-esteem from not getting enough likes on social media, where the true cause of suffering is not the numbers, but the power we've given them to determine our self-worth? And how about our expectations of the way life 'should' be?

This doesn't necessarily mean that we're always the culprits, any more than every touch on our baby’s face is from her own hand. She’ll learn to stop the self-induced ones; I believe we can do the same. That’s a big part of what being relateful is all about.

With love, Jordan