I was up in the middle of the night thinking how hard it is to keep my lens on—that way of seeing what’s currently going on through my most adult values-based self, instead of the hurt, reactive younger parts of myself—and my mind flashed to those screenslaver goggles from that “Incredibles 2” movie and it made me laugh.
When I’m finding it difficult to cope with a particular challenging moment, it really does feel like some screenslaver is forcing those lenses on me—those lenses that convince me that I’ve got to protect myself from threat, those lenses that block my access to see clearly and respond with
compassion and understanding and flexibility.
In the movie, those screenslaver lenses literally forced people to only see what was happening through that very hurt person who was trying to control everyone and force every outcome because they didn’t have the skills to be vulnerable and communicate what was up.
And in the movie, it took that determined little baby who refused to see his mom as anything but his mom, and so he immediately grabbed those lenses off and his mom returned.
In reality we can’t expect our kids to grab those protective lenses off our faces, that’s not their job.
But when we see our kids—we can let their faces remind us who’s standing before us, those younger people who are still loving who we are underneath our protective lenses, waiting for us to show up and support them with the best parts of who we are.
And once we can really see our kids’ faces, it suddenly gets very clear that they’re not giving us a hard time, they’re having a hard time, or maybe they’re simply trying to manage a ton of energy in an environment that lacks the outlets to do so.
And then we can adjust our agenda from trying to protect ourselves, to being there for them, ready to support who they are with the best parts of who we are, so they can feel safe enough to express themselves along with their concerns and feelings and never need to see life through their own screenslaver goggles.
-JLK