Imagine that you are cooking dinner. You’re making a stir-fry, mixing sizzling ingredients in a large pan on the stove. Suddenly the phone rings and you answer it. You continue to cook while chatting on the phone. But now, undetected by you, your daughter wanders by wanting to help. She grabs a hot spice from the counter – the one you use to add an edge to the taste – and she dumps half the jar into the pan. You didn’t notice while your back was turned, so you continue stirring until the hot spice is completely mixed into the meal. When you take a taste your face turns red and you run to the sink to put out the fire in your mouth. What do you do now? You could throw the whole thing away and start over, but that would be a big waste of food. You could serve it and eat a disgusting meal. Or, if you’re clever, you will begin to cut up more ingredients and add them to the dish until the spice becomes diluted and the dish becomes palatable again.
This is a metaphor I use when I’m working with a client who is being held back, or otherwise negatively influenced, by a past event. Sometimes it is a trauma or tragedy. Sometimes it is a period of life that is just too painful to think about and diminishes self-worth. It is something so big that it has come to define who this person is and limits what is possible for him or her. It is bitter – like the hot spice in the story.
And like that spice, it cannot be removed.
The only thing to do is make the person’s life bigger by adding more ingredients (new activities, people, skills, enjoyments, etc.) until the intensity of the bitterness is diluted to a point where the memories become bearable. Over the course of time the bitterness can actually make one into a deeper human being and even add a pleasant edge and taste to life by providing a context of wisdom, empathy and compassion. That is why the focus of my work is on adding light rather than worrying so much about negativity. By making our lives bigger, we transform bitterness into delight.
