Cause and Effect
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
It would be immature for a 35-year-old woman to stick her tongue out and chant, “My business partner is better than your business partner,” while wiggling her butt in your general direction, right?
Because if there’s a single person out there who gives me the green light, I’m going to do that. And I’d love to tell you why.
After posting my “my resilience is low” musing on Wednesday, I woke up to an email from Therese, my cousin and business partner on a delightful new venture called “Stubborn Gladness.” Her email had one sentence:
“Nepalese Auntie here — are you getting your sunlight, walks, and other needs met?? 😜”
And what Therese meant — using the secret language and inside jokes that define any good relationship, especially when one half of the relationship is looking for permission to stick out her tongue and wiggle her bum — is “don’t forget cause and effect, you precious little human.”
What’s true for me right now is that my resilience is low. And my resilience is low for very good reasons. Despite knowing everything that works to tend to the bundle of nature and nurture known as “Keely Marie Carney Copeland the First,” I’m not reliably doing those things.
And in the workshops that Therese and I host, we use the archetype of a “Nepalese Auntie” to help people (ourselves included) laugh at themselves when they find themselves in the exact position I’m currently in: not meeting their human needs and then facing the consequences. (You can read about why we use the Nepalese auntie archetype here.)
Do you understand why we do that? Why we use an archetype like a Nepalese Auntie to help people remember that cause and effect is real? To laugh at themselves when they realize “of course I feel like garbage if I’m not getting sunlight exposure and haven’t moved my body in weeks”?
Because we live in a society that forgets that very basic principle all the time. And we don’t want anyone to beat themselves up when they find themselves in that position. We want people to laugh and say, “Whoops, did it again.” And then take action from a place of playfulness, not self-contempt.
Listen to me carefully, please: we live in a society that is beautiful in so many ways. But we’re also alive in an era where humans have gotten really bad at tending to their human needs.
If you forget to water a plant, it’s going to wither. If it happens to be an orchid, it’s going to wither faster than if the plant happens to be a dandelion.
If you forget to water yourself (to tend to your human needs), you’re going to wither. If you happen to be a human orchid, you’re going to wither faster than you would if you were a human dandelion.
And I feel incredibly lucky to have not only a husband who reminds me of this but also a business partner. Because here I am — someone who literally TEACHES THIS STUFF not tending to my human needs.
Oh, human-ing. What an adventure. Thank goodness for relationships, huh?
Would anyone be interested in a 30-60 minute gathering where Therese and I present the 29 core human needs we cover in our depression workshop? We have an exercise to help participants identify their top 2-3 “I need to prioritize meeting these if I want to feel good” human needs (which are different for all of us — do any of the rest of you need to write essays every day in order to feel the way you want to feel??) and it tends to be pretty fun because we do it Nepalese Auntie style.
Hugs,
Your friend who’s writing her way back to high resilience
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Morning Musings is a delight-first writing practice where I make a cup of coffee, dance around my house a little bit, then put my fingers on the keyboard and see what comes up.
Some folks find these musings helpful. If you know anyone who might like this musing, please share it freely.
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AI disclosure: I run my musings through ChatGPT using the following prompt - “Good morning, can you please proofread this, checking only for typos, spelling errors and grammatical mistakes without changing any of the words or the tone of the piece?” One of my shamanic teachers says it’s important to communicate with AI the way that you’d communicate with a cherished team member and not like a slave. Please do this.
