Bring Your Welcome to the World

When my wife and I were expecting our firstborn, we took a trip to Europe. I was going to a conference, and my wife was along to see the sights. We stayed with friends in one city. Then we went to another city in another country for my conference. Then we went back to the first country to visit its world-famous capital.

I was really looking forward to visiting this capital. I had been to this country before, but never to its capital. This city had been at the centre of many world-shaping events over several centuries. So I was curious to get the feel of it, to see some of the sights that had been iconic for so many.

The city itself did not disappoint. There was beautiful architecture, incredible museums, and many scars from past conflicts. Yet not all these scars were physical.

At some points in its history, this city had been divided against itself. Opposing sides in different conflicts had pitted different parts of the city against one another. The governments involved had perpetuated these conflicts, at great cost to the ordinary people. While these conflicts were mostly resolved when my wife and I visited, many people we met still behaved as if they were occuring.

One evening, after a busy day of seeing the sights, my wife and I went for dinner at a restaurant not far from our hotel. We were offered a table by one of the staff members there, seated, then we waited for our server to come. When the server came, we asked if they had an English menu. The server grunted a response, returned with the appropriate menus, threw them on the table, then disappeared. That was the beginning of a meal during which our service was quite poor.

Unfortunately, we later found out, that was the reputation that city had: brusque, rude, and not at all friendly. This was in sharp contrast to the city from which we had just come. There, we felt, people bent over backward to extend kindness and welcome. The difference between the two was striking.

What was even more striking were the lessons my wife and I both learned from that experience.

When you can’t welcome yourself, it’s impossible to welcome others.

Put most directly: when you can’t welcome yourself, it’s impossible to welcome others.

I’ve seen this many times in my own life.

Readers of this blog will know that at times I’ve struggled with deep feelings of shame and guilt. There are many reasons for this I won’t discuss here. However, one thing I’ve learned is that when I’m feeling least at home with myself, that’s when I treat others poorly.

Sometimes when I’m feeling really down on myself for whatever reason, I respond with anger and frustration to people who always deserve my respect and kindness.

Now, I know why I do this. I do it because I believe I just need to be left alone. My mind and body tell me I have little tolerance for people during these times. So, I treat every simple request, every honest question, as an intrusion. It’s like I want to say:

“Don’t disturb me! I’m grumpy! Let me be hold on to my grump, because I don’t want to deal with the feelings of shame deep inside me. If I really attend to my shame, I fear that what I’m feeling right now might be true. And that’s something I don’t want to deal with right now!”

When in those moments, the last thing I want to do is deal with how horrible I feel. So I try to stuff those unpleasant feelings down within myself, burying them so deep that I’ll never experience them again. But then, everyone else around me has to pay the price.

I wonder if that’s part of what was happening with that server in that European capital so many years ago . . .

The spiritual path is all about integration.

The irony is the spiritual path is all about integration. If I ignore my feelings, trying to bury them deep within myself, that halts my growth. It shows there are parts of myself I cannot accept; there are parts of me I don’t want to deal with. However, this is completely the wrong way to deal with feelings about myself, past experienences, and my desire for healing.

Healing comes when we are able to view everything that’s happened to us through a lens of neutrality. What happened in the past remains in the past. My present experience does not have to be dominated by past events. Yes, these events have played significant roles in making me the person I am today. Yet, if I still feel trapped by feelings stemming from those past events, if somehow, those past events are telling me who I am, who I must be, then that’s the sign of a problem.

The spiritual path tells me I am much bigger than my past. There is so much more to me than my feelings and my memories. So, when I am operating out of that larger self, that’s when I can experience freedom from memories that might otherwise imprison me.

Yet this freedom does not come from trying to bury the memories, stuffing them so deep within me that no one will find them. Rather, this freedom comes from seeing the memories for what they are: only memories. Memories and feelings do not tell us who we are. Rather, what we do with those memories and feelings is a truer indication of who we are.

When walking the spiritual path, choices open up.

When walking the spiritual path, then, choices open up to us. Do I choose to indulge my memories from the past, sinking down into negative feelings about myself and my life? Or, do I work with those memories, telling myself different stories about them so I don’t get trapped by the emotional prisons I can easily build for myself?

If I choose to work with my memories, are there lessons I can learn from them so I don’t make the same mistakes I did previously? Can I choose to view these memories objectively so I can explore them and learn from them, as if they are guests within my awareness? Can I treat all my experiences and memories as potential teachers, deserving of welcome and embrace, even when they initially cause me pain? Challenging questions indeed . . .

These are the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves if integration is our goal. By learning to welcome all our memories, all our experiences, we learn to welcome parts of ourselves we’ve previously buried. And this kind of welcome has consequences.

In our radical welcome of ourselves, we can also deeply welcome others.

When we learn to welcome parts of ourselves we’ve either buried or ignored, then we also learn increasingly to welcome other people, with all their quirks, warts, and dysfunctions. In our radical welcome of ourselves, we can also deeply welcome others.

This does not mean we do not invite other people to be better versions of themselves. But it does mean we can see those other people for who they are, engaging them gently but persistently, inviting them into a deeper welcome of themselves–warts and all.

When my wife and I were in that European city all those years ago, on the one hand we experienced a high level of admiration. We knew about the conflicts that had torn the city apart. And we admired that these conflicts were openly commemorated in museums and various historical sites. I knew from having studied this country that nationally there had been a very deliberate effort to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Yet, on the other hand, it was also clear there was a lot more healing needed in that city. Over dinner with acquaintances, we were told there were still disparities between the different parts of that city, decades after the overt conflicts ended. These disparities fuelled longstanding resentments, all of which contributed to the rudeness and unfriendliness my wife and I had experienced. For our acquaintances, it was clear decades, if not centuries, of healing work were still needed.

The welcome we extend to others is dierectly related to the welcome we offer ourselves.

If there’s a spiritual lesson to be learned in all this, it’s that the welcome we extend to others is directly related to the welcome we offer ourselves. If there are parts of ourselves we can’t bear, or if our lives are dominated by resentments, it will be nearly impossible to offer other people a truly hospitable welcome.

And yet, I think we’ve all experienced deeply transformative welcomes, welcomes that tell us that we’re valued, that we’re loved, that we’ve got something meaningful to offer others.

The take home lesson? Bring your welcome to the world. Extend welcome to yourself, especially those parts of yourself you don’t want others to know about. In doing so, you’ll expand your ability to welcome others with all their quirks, warts, and dysfunctions. Then, they too can bring their welcome to the world because they have first been welcomed by you.

So, bring your welcome to the world. In doing so the world might extend its own welcome to those who may not otherwise experience it.

Disclaimer: The advice and suggestions offered on this site are not substitutes for consultation with qualified mental or spiritual health professionals. The perspectives offered here are those of the author, not of those professionals with whom readers might have relationships as clients or patients. In crisis situations, readers are encouraged to contact these professionals for appropriate support and treatment if needed.