“The kingdom of heaven is like a
treasure hidden in a field which someone discovers, and he hides and guards it
so that they cannot steal it. Then he sells all he has and buys the field just
to get that treasure.”(Mt. 13.44)
Our life is like a treasure hunt. Before
you can find the most precious treasure in life, you must first discover the
first treasure which you usually take for granted… that most precious treasure
which has been given to you to find the most precious treasure in the world.
And that treasure is you… yourself.
This
brings us to the continuation of last week…. How to tame, train, transform your
vampires. How to tame those really difficult people around you? To do this the
first rule is: Protect yourself from them at all times. You must not let those
vampires take over you and control you and suck the life out of you. If you do
this, then you’ve lost the most essential treasure to find the most important
treasure in life.
How do we do this? For any technique in self-defense, you
first need to understand your opponent. You have to first understand those
different vampires I told you about last week.
Imagine you are biking up the hills of
Squamish. The view is wonderful and breathtaking up there. Then you decide to
go higher up the steep beautiful forest. So you park your bike, take your
backpack, and continue on foot. But then you get lost… you try to walk back to
where you think your bike was parked but then you seem to go on circles. You
feel tired, frustrated, and hungry. Then you chanced upon a small cabin. You
run to it and knock on the door. An old man opens it, and lets you in. He seats
you in front of the dining table with a large piece of bread on it. You grab
the bread, but before you could bite you hear the man saying: “If you eat that
bread, I will beat you with this stick. If you don’t eat that bred, I will beat
you with this stick.” Then you look up and you see a stick over your head. What will you do?
That’s
how a vampire operates. That’s how really difficult people treat you. When you deal with them, remember, you can
never please them no matter what you do.
So do not even try.
When
the criticising vampires judge you,
it’s not about you. You could be Mother Theresa and he will still find
something wrong with you. (I admire your love for the poor, but you’re not
defending the First Nations, nor are you doing something for global warming,
you don’t seem to care about the extinction of endangered species, and with that
sari you wear as your habit, you have no fashion sense at all.) It’s not about
you. Protect yourself. It’s about his insecurities.
He wants to make you inferior, so he can feel superior.
When
the spoiled brat vampire is trying
to manipulate you through anger or intimidation, and you don’t follow him, he
makes a tantrum. He’ll shout. He’ll
threaten you. But it is not about you. So protect yourself. It is about his immaturity. His tantrums come from his
deep fear of losing control, which in his mind is connected to losing his own
worth.
When
the sensitive vampire tries to lure
you into self-pity, into that dark dungeon of loneliness and misery, remember
it’s not about you. There is no amount
of help that you could give that would heal the hurts she feels or lessen the
suffering she bears. Don’t try to fall into the trap that you could heal her
sorrow, because only she can do that. So it’s not about you. It is about her woundedness. And that wound will fester
and grow if she is not able to forgive herself first.
When
the clinging vampire holds on to
you, it is not because she loves you truly. She just could not stand being
alone. It’s not about you, so don’t fall into the trap that she really needs
you and that she’ll die without you. No protect yourself. It is all about her fear of isolation. She was probably
left alone as a child by her parents. And yet come to think of it, at the end
of it all we all die alone… we’ll all have to face God alone. So you better get
used to it. But she is does not.
When
the plastic vampire charms you and
flatters you, don’t fall for him right away. Protect yourself and don’t easily
believe. All those lies he tells, it’s not about you. It’s about him. He fears to remove his mask, because as
long as he wears that plastic mask, people love him and see a beautiful and
powerful him (ex. Batman, captain America). He is afraid to remove the mask
because he fears the person behind the
mask that people will not love that him when he is exposed. Thus he masks
his true personality with lies so that we could not see the real him.
So
now I hope you discover that the first treasure God has given you is yourself.
The kingdom begins with you. Do not let the vampires or the really difficult
people steal that treasure from you. When you don’t protect yourself from really
difficult people, it is you who get punished:
- Psychologically- imagine the stress vampires make you feel everyday, the sleepless nights, the daily worry, the acid in your stomach, the tightness in your chest.
- Physically- dealing with vampires gives you headaches, ulcers, body pains, and might even lead to brain tumors as you worry about them.
- Spiritually- These vampires could make you lose your very identity and purpose if you allow them to control your life. If you lose that vision of seeing yourself as a treasure you could end up seeing yourself as trash. So protect that treasure. Guard that treasure from the vampires.
How
do we do that? Like in the earlier story… how do we get to eat the bread if
there’s a stick upon our head? How do we protect ourselves from getting hurt? There
are two ways. We’ll tackle that next week when you come for Holy Mass.
Reference:
Sanchez, Bo. How to deal with difficult people. Shepherd's Voice Publication, Inc. 2014.