you thought I was going to say a box of chocolates, right?
No....a Japanese Zen Rock Garden.
I should have posted this at the beginning of the month as that was the second anniversary of the start of our DD or TTWD lifestyle. But life was still rolling down that hill like boulders. It has been a very stressful 9 months. Some of it relationship.....some of it health. But we are still here, still moving forward.
and that is were the analogy of the Japanese Zen Rock Garden comes in to play.
I am usually really bad at analogies. When I was thinking about what our dynamic had become, I remembered this explanation of what a Japanese Zen Rock Garden symbolized.
The rocks represent the unmovable mountains or islands and the waves raked in the sand or pebbles represent the currant of the river moving around the mountains. Looking at it you would assume the river was the symbol of energy, rapidly moving, cutting into the sides of the mountain. However, even though the mountain is still, is it not also a symbol of energy, of force? It holds it's ground against the force of the river, cutting the river in half. So which one expends the greater energy? Or is the more efficient at expending that energy?
This is a perfect description of not only my husband (the mountain) and myself (the river), but also of our dynamic and how it works.
Between us, my husband is "the mountain". He is steady, not moved by outside forces or even by me. He stays true to himself and stays the course of where he believes our family should go. It often appears, especially to me that he is not moving or doing at all, but then he will shock the bejeebers out of me when he suddenly appears to have changed by leaps and bounds, and yet he is still the same. I am "the River", running around organizing everyone, taking care of immediate needs and expending a lot of energy to do so.
In our dynamic, there are times when it has been "the river" and the environment or the life we live has been "the Mountain". Our dynamic changing so rapidly, we feel like we are riding the wild rapids barely able to hold on. While everything else around us seems to stay the same. At other times, most of the time it seems, our dynamic is the "the Mountain". This big still unmovable thing between us, not expending any energy, not accomplishing anything. Life is "the river" then, battering against the mountain and rushing by mocking our lack of movement. Amazingly, in that stillness, the most growth can happen.
As I said it has been a stressful 9 months. We had a visitor for 6 months and at the beginning of Feb they left. We love them dearly, but could not wait for the day of departure. The six weeks before they left, TTWD just sort of faded to the background and our minds. We stopped doing the things that made it work, because it TOOK a lot of work and we were exhausted. We couldn't wait to get back to it. There was a problem. We were so exhausted we had nothing left to put into the dynamic. A good friend gave me the perfect analogy for what was happening to us. Marriage was like a joint bank account, each person putting in to the account. Sometimes, one contributing more than the other and at other times, one withdrawing more than the other. Most of the time though maintaining a healthy balance.
We were not at zero in our account, we were significantly in the red. Dangerously neither one of us had anything to contribute. When we tried to restart our dynamic, we reached a crisis point when he looked at me one day and said, "I don't want to be responsible for you". I was shocked. In that moment it felt as if he said I don't want to be with you. I quickly realized we weren't ready. We both needed time to heal, to rejuvenate ourselves, before we could look to our relationship. We didn't even have the energy to discuss it. We both just began to maintain our basic roles, bread winner and homemaker, and began doing things to heal ourselves. He went back to the gym and I signed up for a class that I wanted to take for a long time. During this time our relationship/TTWD appear to be "the mountain", completely unmoving, still.
It took a couple of months and then we both started to miss TTWD. At the same time, literally, we looked at each other and I said, "You know, I really miss.." and he said, "yeah, I know, I do too" and that was it. I asked what he missed the most and his response surprised me, "I like spanking you".
WHAT??!!
"Why? What is it you like about it?"
"The Mountain" who just showed me how much he had changed since we began this thing, in the beginning he refused to spank me, now showed how much he was still the same. LOL, he refused to discuss it in detail and changed the subject.
When we restarted it, we realized it had never really stopped. While we were not actively practicing, the break gave both of us time to look at our dynamic objectively and we both came back and in the moment started talking and changing how we did this thing. We had gotten stuck in a routine or pattern of how we thought it should work. It is now easier, more natural for us. In the down time of our dynamic, as "the mountain", we were actually changing and we didn't realize it until we became active again (changing to "The River") and we saw how much the still force of "the mountain" had changed the flow of "the river".
Are you totally confused now? Sorry
Things are still in "the mountain" stage unfortunately. There have been a lot of health issues in our house, illnesses and injuries. Rooster keeps reminding me, these things will heal with time, we are not dealing with something like cancer. See, he is a mountain. I try to remember what he says but at times I am overwhelmed.
Our dynamic?.... I am not worried about it. We will always do this thing in some way, either in "the mountain" stage or "the river" stage, the energy of TTWD is a force of its own.
