Putting the edge back on is worthwhile

​I was barely through Brene' Brown's introduction of her new book - Atlas of the Heart - when I encountered some of the powerful words she's become known for offering us.

She was talking about spending a large portion of her life numbing her pain. And she said, "I learned that taking the edge off is not rewarding, but putting the edge back on is one of the most worthwhile things we can do. Those sharp edges feel vulnerable, but they are also the markers that let us know where we end and others begin."

Where we end and others begin....

I was having lunch with some co-workers yesterday. We were talking about a mutual friend who has a bit of an awkward laugh. I told them, you know, some people laugh because they are experiencing genuine happiness and joy in a connection. But other people, I told them, other people use laughter to keep distance in the connection.

When there is laughter, you avoid the risk of talking about things that aren't laughter. You avoid talking about things that might be painful. You avoid vulnerable.

The last several years, I know I've been working on un-numbing myself. I have a long way to go, but I am feeling more of the sharp edges in life.

Several years ago, I had to have a cavity filled in a tooth. The dentist numbed one side of my mouth so I wouldn't feel the pain while he was drilling and filling.

I guess that's a good thing while that drill is going. But when he was done, the numb remained. And for hours, I couldn't feel my tongue. I couldn't taste my food. I had no idea, really, where my mouth ended and where anything that came near it began.

When the numbness wore off, my mouth suddenly hurt. But I could feel again. And taste again. And there was something really worthwhile about that.

One of the things I've been discovering about my own numbing - you can numb yourself long enough that you come to believe the whole world is numb. While you're hiding your own pain, you can start to believe no one else feels pain.

The whole world feels numb.

That's a dangerous thing to feel if you believe what I believe - that empathy fuels the world. That it's not our ability to make each other happy but our ability to feel and begin to predict each other's pain that nurtures the well-being of the world.

When I read Brene' Brown's words, I thought of them through the lens of my own personal life. But yesterday, after writing about the numbing I see many of us exercising when it comes to school shootings, my cousin commented:

"I believe being numb is a choice at some point. We may have become numb to the initial news of the trauma, but it is a choice to not stop and sit with the news and emotions of the event. It is a choice to not reflect and FEEL. If we don’t collectively make the decision to FEEL these events will continue to occur. Because with numbness comes inaction."

She's right. Numb is a choice. It's not a choice you easily recognize when you're in the middle of numb, but it is a choice. It's a choice you make to hide from your own pain. Which leads to hiding from the reality of others' pain. And when there is no pain, nothing needs to change.

Because pain IS the driver of all change.

My prayer is that we are all becoming exhausted trying to outrun and outsmart vulnerability and pain. My prayer is that we are all beginning to see the suffering our hiding is bringing to ourselves and to others.

My prayer is that we will all start discovering with a little more pain where we end and where others begin. And in that discovery, begin doing something different. Because this morning, in Uvalde, Texas, there are too many families who don't have the privilege of running from their pain.

They know all too well this morning the markers of where life begins and ends..