Living and working in a crowded, noisy city can grate on the nerves. But for Uplifted host Meg Lindholm, the noise that bothered her most was her father's repetitive tirades. She felt powerless to prevent them until she brought the image of a TV set to mind. And voila - the chain of negativity was broken.
Sometimes the heat between the layers of our lives builds up inside us to the point where we erupt. Which I realize conjures up images of death and destruction. But sometimes eruptions can be a good thing. Not when they hurt others. But when they lead to a release of negative heat or energy and leave positive change in its place.
One example of this goes back to when I was a single career gal living the good life in New York City. Except that I wasn’t – living the good life that is. I was working in a dead-end job for the benefits and decent pay because I had no idea what else to do. And my feeling about the area where I worked near City Hall felt equally grim. The buildings around me were gray and drab filled with thousands of government workers who all spilled out at the lunch hour to crowd into the few restaurants in the area.
Every few weeks my father would come downtown to meet me for lunch. We often ate at a place that catered to crowds of city workers called Ellen’s. The place was always bursting at the seams with tables that were pushed so close that you sat elbow to elbow with other patrons. The tight squeeze forced the volume of conversation to rise higher and higher with everyone talking louder and louder to be heard over everyone else. But like smokers accustomed to smoke, we were accustomed to the noise. And besides living with noise was just a fact of City life. There was noise from traffic and sirens and screeching subway brakes. And there were guys like Steve - one of my co-workers, who drove a van around the city to places where we worked. He’d lean out his window yelling at anyone who was jaywalking, “Yo! Crackhead! Get out of my way.”
But none of that noise bothered me as much as my father’s frequent tirades when we had lunch together. He would rant that the college students he taught were semi-literate. He ranted about the sorry state of public education. And he ranted about the bureaucrats who he felt had hijacked his college and were making his life miserable with their bad decisions.
His tirades were familiar enough to repeat in my sleep. I often feigned interest while thinking about other things. But one day with everyone at lunch talking loudly around us, all the layers of my unhappy life erupted. I didn’t yell or get up and storm out of the restaurant. I didn’t tell him he was boring me to death. I didn’t tell him that I wished I had a job I loved. Or that I hated the restaurant we were eating in. I simply looked at him and said “Dad, I need you to change the channel.” Like changing the channel on a TV. What I meant was stop the rant, calm down and switch to something else. And you know what? It worked. For a few seconds he didn’t say anything. He sat and looked at me with a combination of shock and awe. And I realized I possessed a super-power that I never knew I had. I had broken through his verbal spin. I had cut it at its root and sparked a transition to a calmer state of mind.
I don’t remember what we talked about afterwards. What I do remember is that the tone felt so much better. Milder. Calmer. Less hostile and self-absorbed. Change the channel is a line I have used many times since, and not just with my father. Maybe you can try it. See if it works with someone whose talk you find unbearable. See if it makes a difference.
Thanks for reading this step of the journey that I call Uplifted. You can listen to this essay as a podcast here. You can also subscribe to my blog here and you can follow the project on Facebook and Instagram. I would love it if you would share and/or review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Here’s how to leave a review. Until next time, take care of yourself and each other.