Shake It Off
When my two-year old granddaughter falls or bumps into something or drops a book about Peter Rabbit on her foot, her inclination is to cry. Usually, there is a tiny pause—like about a second-- between the time the encounter happens and the arrival of the realization that it didn’t feel good to her brain. In that blink-and-you-miss-it gap, she’s learned to make a decision about how she will respond.
What she does is “shake it off.”
Literally.
She shakes her head and her tiny little arms and even her legs, one foot at a time. It’s her way of not getting caught up in the momentary hurt. It’s her way of dealing with it and getting it out of her system. It’s her way of moving on.
Humans, it seems, in general, are natural born collectors. We hoard stuff. Our cabinets are full of things we used to like or once had to have or might someday come to need. We have tools we cannot find, clothes we cannot wear, and dishes we will never, ever use. And for a myriad of reasons we usually cannot name, we simply cannot bring ourselves to throw the stuff away. Even once we figure out that it no longer serves us, we just keep it in the vault.
We don’t just do that in our houses, though. We also do it in our heads. Possessions aren’t the only things that take up precious space.
Gathering and collecting actions, comments and opinions has become the great American pastime. We amass what fallible humans do and say, hoarding gestures, words, and phrases as if they were fashioned with intent to pierce us to the bone. And some are. But many, many others aren’t. Often, the people behaving poorly or making statements we find painful are not thinking of us at all. We’re not the central character in everybody’s tale. And yet, we grasp at actions and utterances of others, clutching them to our chests as if they were pre-ordained to live inside our soul.
Moving on is not a thing we’re very good at anymore.
Growing up, my friends and I were peppered by “Shake it off!” Maybe it’s an old school thing, or a small town thing, or an Oklahoma thing--but I feel like somebody I believed in shouted it toward me in the small southern town that raised me once a week. As a softball player when I’d get nailed by an errant pitch, I’d hear “Shake it off!” as I tossed my bat and jogged down the first base path. At the freethrow line after an important miss, I’d hear “Shake it off!” come at me from the sideline or the bleachers as the referee handed me the ball for a second try. When I tripped and fell or dropped the ball or scratched my knee or cracked my heart, someone was always not too far in the distance making sure that I moved on. “Shake it off” is among some of the best advice I ever received.
I have a sign hanging in my living room that displays Don Miguel Ruiz’s “Four Agreements.” The author’s code of conduct, devised to limit personal suffering and create a conduit for joy, is based on Toltec wisdom, and his four agreements boil peaceful living down to a simple four-pronged charge:
“Always try your best. Be impeccable with your word. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t take things personally.”
In my mind when I read the first two, I hear someone yelling “Just do it!” And when I read the second two, I hear “Shake it off!” How to successfully keep on going can be whittled down to that.
My granddaughter’s ability to move on is not innate. Her parents taught her early that “shaking it off” is something you can do in lieu of crying if you’re so inclined. And so it has become a visceral reaction to her little dents and dings. It’s what she does to get past the pain to whatever fabulous types of wonders might be waiting around the bend. And wondrous stuff is everywhere--life proves that to her every day. It’s a deal, I feel quite certain, she is already glad she has made.
For some reason, though, we grown-ups have a harder time with letting go. We like to hang on to stuff that happens and stack it up in piles—as if space were infinite, like we won’t run out of room. But we will. And we do. Then we have no place to put the stuff we really need to keep. In addition, the hurts we save get heavy. Carrying them around makes us tired and out of sorts, and ultimately way less nimble for avoiding future scrapes.
Little, hidden hazards are everywhere. It’s impossible to move through days and weeks—much less months and years—and not get scathed. The nicks are part of living. They’re the price we pay for being imperfect humans doing business in a less than perfect world. But we don’t have to make every stumble into a five-alarm ordeal. Some things we can just wriggle through and leave in our wake. “Shaking it off” is as much a long-term strategy as it is a short-term coping mechanism. It’s a decision to keep on going because better lies ahead.