We always try and have some family TV viewing on the go here at Croft Towers – a way for three busy people with totally separate work, school and social agendas to come together.
It has to be something we can all get behind, and ideally something that myself and Mrs Croft consider very loosely ‘educational’ for the girl. Life stuff, you know? An experience that's going to have you pausing every now and again, because it's sparked some revelation, or curiosity or analysis of the human condition.
Consequently, we're two-thirds of the way through 6 Seasons of This Is Us – a generational family drama with real emotional heft that covers pretty much every ‘issue’ going. Its brilliant, and if you're looking for your next 106-episode epic to settle into, look no further! 😂
There's a spoiler-free trailer for the series finale you can watch here, to get a taste, and I've picked that one because of what the dad, Jack, says at the end of it, to his three kids:
“Try and appreciate the moments. I mean, that's what we're doing – collecting these little moments. And we spend the rest of our lives looking back, trying to remember.”
It's the kind of programme where it seems like one of the kids is always reminiscing about some nugget of wisdom imparted way back when, and it got me curious one bedtime, when I pondered out loud, “I wonder which of my incessant ramblings you'll remember when I'm long gone?”
🤔
Not really expecting an answer (or maybe something completely random, the likes of which could only come out of an 11yo mouth), I was therefore surprised when she came back with,
“The ‘can you handle it’ song!”
Now this may have just been the recency effect at play (I think it got sung earlier that evening), but even so – the fact she doesn't actively hate it, I find to be very encouraging!
Because it only ever makes an appearance when one of us is in a low mood (and you know what minds are like, when it comes to making connections 😬).
A song for the dark times
Anyone who's been around the Daily Reminders for longer than about 10 minutes will know that we don't experience life the way it looks like we do.
So while it may seem like it's situations and circumstances and emails and other people and money and work and family that ‘make us’ feel a particular emotion, it's not. The entirety of our felt experience—every last shred of it; 100%!—of life comes from within:
Which has huge implications when things don't turn out how we (polite cough: our Thought Systems 📦) want them to. Because it means that when we're getting upset about something, it's not the ‘something’ that's creating the upset, it's the mind's response to the something.
And when we're trying to be good little humans and accept, or surrender to life, again, it's not the situation we're surrendering to, it's whatever the mind's response to the situation is.
That's very different!
Seeing this one little quirk of nature will change your entire life, so I come here to write about it every day and I'm obviously going to impart that crucial knowledge to my first-born, whom I love dearly. I see it as my parental duty.
I can't remember exactly how it came about, but once, when my daughter was ‘responding poorly’ to something she had to do, I sensed there was a little room for manoeuvre and, in a lighthearted, silly mood myself, I started teasing her,
“Can you handle it, Crofty? Can you handle the way your mind's responding right now? Can you?! Can you handle it? Can you, can you, can yooooou??!”
…and in that way that fresh new ideas tend to arise out of moments of presence, as she lightened up too, it morphed into a new song.
🎵
Caaan you handle it?
Caaan you handle it?
Can you handle Jobert's reaction?
(‘Jobert’ is the name she's given her mind – it's perfect 😙👌🏻)
And it's stuck!
Quid pro quo
We all have minds, which means we all have tantrums. I do, you do, your kids do. Us crafty adults have found ways to reflect our little tantrums inwardly (mostly!) but that doesn't mean we don't have them, so this whole notion of ‘can you handle it’ applies across the board.
And I've made it clear to my daughter, in those moments where the song's been less well received/outright rejected, that I am absolutely fine on being called out on my own mind BS any time it's spotted out in the wild. (In fact, I demand it!)
She's always a willing participant when the shoe's on the other foot.
“Can you handle it, Dad?”
…she'll ask, with a cheeky grin, as she's doing something she knows winds up the Giles Ego Construct 📦 good and proper – and it usually slows me down enough to re-examine my beliefs in that moment and decide whether I want to:
- carry on being serious and laying down the law, or
- give in and accept the chaos.
🤷🏻♂️
It's important to reiterate that this isn't ‘handling it’ in the feel-the-fear-and-do-it-anyway sense of being able to handle any situation that comes along (although you can do that too, you're awesome!), it's very specifically ‘handling’ our mind's response to life's happenstance.
You're ‘handling’ that thought-created perceptual reality you're swimming in, right here in this moment, that's all.
And you can do it. I know you can, because we all can.
And that, my friend, is how you transmute suffering… into peace.
💝
Giles
p.s. when you're creating your own little can-you-handle-it song, it doesn't have to be a masterpiece, ok?
Mentioned above
Giles P Croft
A classic.