The stone.
The stone in the air, which I followed.
Your eye, as blind as the stone.
…
One more word like this word, and the hammers
will swing over open ground.
From Flower, Paul Celan
Welcome dear readers,
You may hurt somebody today.
It may occur just by happenstance because you said the wrong thing or stepped in the wrong direction. Or looked too much like the ex-boyfriend. Or sounded too much like the mother.
Or your tiredness was mistaken for disdain.
Or perhaps you did it deliberately because you wanted the other person to hurt.
Because you yourself were hurting.
You may be hurt today.
It may be a random comment or a look from someone passing by.
Something said with no intention to hurt you, but you were too lonely or hungry or tired to shape it into good intentions. That it was the tenth time someone said something like that to you and it just got to you. Or it’s some old, old memory. A palimpsest left over from earlier hurts, ghosting up.
Sometimes we do not even know why we feel hurt.
Sometimes we do not even know how we hurt people.
Over twenty years ago, in a course I was teaching for adults, I mentioned Isaiah Berlin’s intellectual game about how people learn: the fox and the hedgehog.
The hedgehog learner learns deeply and thoroughly about a narrow field, pursuing full understanding. The fox learner quickly gathers up vast amounts of information, making connections between topics, but without depth for any particular one.
We were going around the room and people were talking about their learning style. The person next to me said they were a hedgehog, and then I said “I‘m a fox.” I thought it was a fun and interesting discussion before the start of class.
Weeks later, in a conference, an angry student told me I had hurt her.
“How have I hurt you?” I asked. “You said you were a fox, and I’m a hedgehog,” she replied.
I waited, because I didn’t know how to understand her hurt.
And then it came out. She had felt diminished by her hedgehog-ness. I had thought this question was akin to “Star Wars or Star Trek,” but what I had forgotten was my power. As the professor, I had more situational power, and this student had taken my words to mean it was superior to be a fox. My words had hurt her. I had hurt her. And that hurt had lasted for weeks. And even after my explanation and my apology, I think there still was hurt. There was still the ghost of her own feelings of unworthiness, rising up from long before she was in my class, hungry to hear my words as proof of her inadequacies.
Hurt is about the invisible.
Our blindness to our power; eye, as blind as stone.
Our ancient ghosts, rising up, crashing in our hearts, hungry mouths roaring emptiness.
We must see before making it right.
We must acknowledge before we can heal.
So you may hurt someone today. And you may be hurt today.
The wound is the place where light enters. -- Rumi
Emily
*I know – writing in the second person, as if I’m the onlooker to this hurt. I did, though, want to suggest the type of distance we may need to take to see our own power and ghosts.
**It’s easy for people in power to forget they have it, particularly if they’re feeling frustrated or overloaded. I’m planning on writing about power dynamics in the future (and about mining disappointment for intimacy).
***The etymological roots of hurt are from Middle High German, hurten, to run at, to collide, to ram.