Rocks and Ladybugs

It’s that most wonderful time of the year.  Give your change into the red kettle outside Kroger.  Donate a toy for a tot at the bank.  Collect shoeboxes for children.  The pleas from charities for support can overwhelm.  Many of us give back this time of year - willingly or begrudgingly - in addition to planning Christmas surprises for our loved ones. Retailers also encourage us to buy a gift for ourselves as we play Santa for others.  I think one of the most important gifts we can give ourselves actually involves getting rid of some things.

Stones.  Rocks.  Virginia Woolf put stones and rocks in the pockets of her coat and drowned herself in the River Ouse.  Virginia had her reasons, not the least of which was depression, for loading up her pockets.  Without committing immediate suicide, many of us do the same thing every day.

Life throws rocks at us.  They are in the form of annoyances:  you have to wait in line to buy milk; there is a school bus in front of you on the way to work.  They can be heavier:  the IRS might be auditing your business; you lose your job; your under-age child comes home drunk.  Or, these stones can be too heavy to lift alone:  death of a parent; cancer; foreclosure.  The question is:  what will we do with these rocks?

Recently, I have met several people who seem committed to hanging onto these rocks.  One woman believes that no one is encountering or had encountered anything worse than what is currently happening in her family. She takes every opportunity to recount her troubles – they never get change, much less get better.  Such a person fills her pockets each day and collects them on her nightstand.  Every morning, rock people pick up these weights, carry them around, and add to them throughout each day.  These people are bruised; they are angry; they are sad; they feel stuck; they complain continually.  When you are around these people, you must fight to keep them upright.  Their rock-weights are throwing them off- balance.  Mind you, these are perfectly lovely people, but they are opting to be weighed down – and this weight transforms how they live and communicate.  Eventually, their rock piles are so large, they can’t carry all of them around.  Still, every day they pick and choose rocks to carry around, and they add more each and every day.

Then, there are the ladybug people.  These people experience the same things that others do – large unfairnesses, little annoyances, life-threatening challenges.  Somehow, these people transform their circumstances and stumbles into ladybugs.  Many, many of these magical ladybugs fly away.  Some of the ladybugs hang around, and must be shooed away – often more than once.  Some ladybugs hang out for a lifetime.  The ladybugs that flit about the house or yard serve as reminders of the troubles, but they are acknowledged and then dismissed.

Let us not forget that ladybugs can a helpful insect in gardening.  In fact, ladybugs eat aphids, also called plant lice that are harmful to most plants.  If you can be a ladybug person, you can try to see the good or usefulness in even the toughest of circumstances.  I had a conversation over Thanksgiving with a former student who was involved in a medical crisis during which her body temperature approached 109 degrees.  In her own words, she nearly died.  We spent some time talking about the lasting effects of such an experience, as well as what can come out of such a situation.  We also talked about how to turn the negative effects of life into something meaningful.  She didn’t take her frightening experience as a stone to put in her pocket; she was turning it into a ladybug that could perhaps even eliminate other negatives from her life. 

This Christmas season, I think many of us might pause in our shopping and donating, and dispose of some rocks.  Donate the big ones to a rock recycling center.  Wave your magic wand and transform some of the smaller ones into ladybugs.  And, don’t collect any more rocks.  Charity begins at home – if we can give ourselves the gift of freedom, we might have a lighter holiday season – along with a few ladybugs decorating the tree.