“Another day…just believe…Another day…just breathe”… Telepopmusik can be inhaled with such ease. The lighthearted carefree tones bounce into your soul one measure at a time. No one forces you to listen to this song, but rather you take it in without noticing. Like traveling, it transforms you the moment you take a breath, whether you wanted the fabric of your soul to be changed or not. You find yourself shaking out the anxiety of life from your head unwinding, to your shoulders decompressing, to your stomach unclenching, to your toes freely wiggling. Much like the bounce of a melody playing through your mind on repeat, reflections and insights flutter through my mind regularly no matter where I go. Up in the air at the moment, 36,000 feet above the Midwest, my mind is processing the trip I just took to visit my brother and his family in Maryland and Washington D.C. At the same time, my heart peels away at the processed notions and ideas that bloom from this reflective state. My heart sifts through each strand. The strands of new information are cleansed much like how the cleaner shrimp eat the parasites off of a fish nearby (yes, that is a connection to one of my 4th Grade Science Lessons). The parasitic thoughts or negative thoughts of the trip are tossed into a part of my mind that will later be carefully analyzed (haha, which is now). The new, positive feedback from the trip will be stitched into the fabric of my soul with individual colors of their own identity.
Quilt Auctioned off at the 1864 Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia (Ford Theater Museum, D.C.)
As we fly closer to home, the yarn from these new patterns will take on their own design and become a permanent layer of my heart, where future predicaments will be handled according to this new transformation.
When it is time, I will hack at the parasitic trashcan of my mind, cleanse the information using the heart sifter, and once again more information will be added to the soul fabric. How and when we pull down the parasitic pieces differs from person to person, but the fact is that IT DOES get dealt with brutally and integrated into who I am. Some of us hack at it while on the plane, some of us let it marinate, and some of us let it rise to the top like pieces of egg soaking in the frying pan. It doesn’t make us worse or better people, but it does matter that we analyze and reflectevery part of the information and that we are conscious that we are doing it, much like being in a state of awareness versus floating through life.
My nephew…Sammy…transforming me…just. by. being. him.
Patience has been a key factor in how I sift through the information and transform. The whole process of sifting depends on how honest you are with yourself. The more in denial you are, the less negative information gets cleansed. I believe a major cornerstone of becoming a better person or growing closer to God is the ability to try to tackle ALL negative information and cleanse it ALL completely; therefore, every person and every experience is a positive experience, transforming us continuously and making us more aware of our strengths and weaknesses. As we face each part that we believe to be negative, we are actually facing our weakest parts and choosing to bloom than rather brushing it off as the following popular perspectives: “someone making us feel a certain way” or “bringing out the worst in us”. As we consciously crave to face these lessons, we are constantly confronted with similar situations until we fully learn the lesson sort-of-speak. Further, in terms of maintaining loving and unselfish relationships within and outside of our families, we must apply a level of patience to the heart sifter to continue to grow closer in these relationships and continue to cheer each other on in the Marathon of Life… without regret, without jealousy, without talking smack, without wanting each other to fall, without blaming ourselves, and without expecting anything in return.
Marble Wall of Quotes Surrounding the Martin Luther King Monument (D.C.)
Sometimes it is easier for us to practice patience with the world OUTSIDE of our family. We tend to expect more from the people closer to us. All of a sudden, our Moms are expected to treat us like adults because we know they raised us with a vision in mind of who they wanted us to be… “MOM! Don’t tell me how to do this – I do take care of myself when you’re not here.” We expect our Dads to respect us on the same level that they are on because they had the vision of where they wanted us to be career wise… “Dad you’re not listening to my story!” We expect our siblings to know that we overcame the same obstacles and are traveling the same path independently… “Ya, I guess we’re saying the same thing.” When we put such expectations on our loved ones, we are not looking at them like people in the world. Instead, we assume that the expectations will make communication easier, when in reality it causes more friction and bumps in the relationships.
We know we love our family at the root and we will do things for our family without thinking twice that we wouldn’t normally do for strangers in the world, but on a daily basis, do we jump in the way of the bullet that isn’t being fired yet?
On our way to the White House.
As family evolves and grows bigger, we must begin to view our family as real people in the world who eat, sleep, and survive under their own roofs. BUT, this takes patience to allow the heart to change the preset mindset that has been on autopilot for so many years. It shouldn’t take drastic events in a family to change this mindset, but sadly that is the case most of the time. Can we change our mindsets within our families without an excuse? Yes. It takes… patience…silence…listening…observing…and reading into each other’s hearts the way we would read into a stranger’s life.
In my family, I would consider us simultaneous processors and thinkers. We tend to take in information from experiences quickly and we sortit immediately into negative and positive information. Depending on how much pride is in the way, the positive information is quickly applied to the fabric of the soul. On average, we move over and cleanse the negative feedback fairly quickly, right after sifting through it, which is why I consider it to be simultaneous. This allows us to transform and adapt fast to difficult situations. This is good and bad. Good because we are constantly open to evolving and changing our mindsets to relate and connect with others on a genuine level – no fake responses in a world where small talk is our “in” to luring you into a deeper conversation about life and who you are to the core. However, the “simultaneous processing” has negative effects on people when it happens during a conversation. We get so excited about a particular realization or transformation that just happened in the conversation, that we tend to communicate it right there and then, which usually causes friction with whomever we are in a conversation with. This can look like “not listening” (when really we are reflecting on the person’s words and transferring it to the next thought), it can look like “moving on” (where we do not like to dwell on a notion that we’ve already learned or just talked about with the person), and it can look like “talking over” (where we want the other person in the conversation to bounce to the next idea with us).
In all cases it can appear rude, condescending, or make people feel that what they have to say is not important when that is not the intention at all.
As I watched my family spend time together this week, I decided to study how we all interact and compare it with how others process information. In short, my whole family is actually fully aware of how we process information. Instances that illustrated this conclusion were small and I used to completely miss it. For example, we get silent while a person is talking or thinking of their next thought. Some of the silence is while we are talking. I noticed that my family is almost not listening to their own words and reading into the other person in the conversation as we are talking. We are already picking up on the other person’s mannerisms, comfort or discomfort in the conversation, etc. I am aware that we all do this, but breaking down the people that I know so well, helps to explain the difference between ALL processors. This “silence” happens so fast, but we are silent the same amount of time that other people are silent – it’s just done during the conversation as we are consciously reading into everything about the person. Based on what we pick up on, we will rattle on or go silent. This is the part where our family needed work. There were times when we heard in our hearts “just stop”, but we chose not to stop for misunderstood reasons as stated before. Then, there is an amount of faith that goes into it, where as we talk we just trust that what is coming out of our mouths has already been prepared in our heads and hearts, so that part just flows. When we get silent for longer periods of time in a conversation, the whole goal is to show respect or make someone feel at ease amongst the energy of the Contreras Clan. This type of observing, or longer periods of silence used to never happen consistently in our family, and now that it does I am able to see the level of patience that it takes to just observe instead of talk, to listen instead of share, to read into instead of confront, and to ask questions instead of answer. To get to this level of patience, we had to get to a level of respect, and to get to this level of respect, we had to be comfortable with ourselves and rely on the other half of our family values, which believes that actions speak louder than words.
Now that we are all synced on this level of respect, we are able to change our energy in certain situations as a group in order to maintain the loving relationships in our family.
In the past, I made the mistake of talking to people assuming we were the same way or that we should all process a specific way due to my own beliefs about efficiency. To explain the reasoning behind this further, after the first year of teaching, I was impressed with how children picked up on the way others process and can categorize and how they would label themselves as a certain type of processor by comparing themselves to others in the classroom without feeling insecure – just pure observations and conclusions. Even more fascinating was how the majority of the class adhered to my way of processing, when I did not teach them or demand that they do so. By the end of the year, we all become connected on a level similar to family because of this interaction. Everyone in the classroom still learns according to their own manner, gifts, and abilities, but the level of reflection and thinking about our thinking (metacognition) tends to be the same by the end of the year. This allows us as teachers to run efficient classrooms and build close knit, trusting relationships whether it’s student-to-student or student to teacher. As we say in the education world, the students become yours and you become theirs. On a broader scope, adults have the same potential to build such relationships and we should choose to get to this point in life to not just build trusting friendships and good relations in the work field, but to ultimately grow and evolve together in our family cores. Similarly to the leading force in the classroom, the energy of a family goes back to its genetics and will always be the connecting piece to the family puzzle. As families change over time, patience guided by love, is needed to change together and maintain those trusting bonds. Friction in the family core affects the individual whether we see it or not. If we truly believe in becoming closer to God, living at our highest potential, loving others, seeing Jesus in others, and so on and so forth, then to go forward we must first master respecting our family members on a genuine level and NOT on a forced level.
The problem with patience is we are for it AND we are against it.
We think we are being patient because we truly want to be, but in most cases when we think we are being patient, we could be that much more patient. Further, there are egotistical gremlins that get in the way of putting forth the patience to truly respect a person, the main one being PRIDE. Let’s look at the most common arguments for and against patience, which also happen to be the steps to praying out the PRIDE that keeps us from applying patience when we need to. The first argument for or against patience circles around the fact that if you need patience to “deal” with someone, then you shouldn’t be dealing with them in the first place, or that you shouldn’t surround yourself with such people. The second argument for or against patience insinuates that patience is painful so why even practice it? The third argument for or against patience is that if you have to be patient with someone then you have the problem to work out – not the other person. Let’s zoom in on the first argument of having to deal with certain people or choosing not to surround yourself by such people.
Eleanor Roosevelt Dedication within the FDR Memorial.
When we do not want to deal with certain types of people, we are trying to protect our soul fabric. We are living in fear. For one, we fear that our foundation could be crushed or demeaned by such people. This is a reality of interacting with people at all times. Some books will tell us to protect ourselves and simply not “abuse” ourselves or put ourselves in “those situations”. This is considered okay when you have a choice (abusive relationships, people that take advantage, coworkers that compete with bad intentions, etc). But what if you do not have a choice? What if your son, daughter, brother, sister, mother, or father is this type of person you apparently avoid? We all change over time, we all evolve, we travel, and we take on new additions of the soul fabric wherever we go. At the core, family is the same genetically. We remember that we do think the same, that we do have the same mannerisms, and that we do react to obstacles or situations similarly.
But, on the surface there are layers of soul fabric that build on top of the core of the genetics that must be opened up once again when interacting with family, like cracking open an ice-cold beer.
Keeping our beers cold on the front yard…Californians adapting to the East Coast.
Someone has to get the bottle opener! Will it be you, or the one holding the beer, or will you both go for it at the same time? We can all feel this level of love when people make the effort to connect and it means that much more when it’s within your own family. Just like best friends, you only become closer as you choose to go through the opening of the bottle together. Well, making the effort comes in many different forms, and for the types of processors that I was raised by I’ve learned that it is vital to just observe, even my own siblings, in those first moments after not having connected in a while. Once we can see the layers that need to be bypassed, like snow, those layers melt away. The other member of the family can sense it too, which I believe, makes you family.
Mom and Dad at the airport – Core to Core Foundation.
In the cheesiest way possible, the love in the relationship melts the snow and you are left with one processor’s core versus another processor’s core.
In family, this feels so wonderful, because the core is the same. Through conversation, this realization develops. Being raised by two “simultaneous processors”, I’ve had to learn to slow it down. However, my mind processes at the same rate still. I simply slow down the physical reactions. Instead of responding, I choose to listen when need be – PATIENCE. This is the first level of patience that works for me when I want to connect with people that I fear may not “get me”, “respect me” or even “listen to me.”
Inside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
The second argument in that to practice patience is painful, is quite true. It is only painful because we are running around with our heads cut off trying to figure out what will help us not be mad inside when trying to “say nothing at all”. When I get this anxious angry feeling inside, I simply listen (which ironically is the not-so-painful part). This type of listening does not necessarily mean listen to the person’s words right away, it is more of listening to your inner dialogue as you are reading into the person that you are interacting with. In Catholic terms, we refer to this as listening to the Holy Spirit while connecting with others. This type of listening allows us to listen to our hearts for the sake of connecting, Jesus to Jesus. Through the listening, I take in everything – their facial expressions, their mannerisms, their tones, and lastly, their words. I say words lastly because if you soak in the words first, YES you will take it all personally. Your ego will get in the way and every word will bring you down. In Catholic terms – you are getting tricked by the Devil the whole time.
It cracks me UP that I am just now realizing what my Dad has been trying to teach me for years, and even my Dad, the “fast simultaneous processor”, could not break it down and teach it, much like how some of the best professors are sometimes the worst teachers.
He would constantly say to me in Daddy mantras when he noticed I was about to blow up on someone (usually one of my brothers or my Mom…the test trial dummies that I failed on so many times before entering the real world), “Just ignore it…”, “Don’t sweat the small stuff…”, “Quit talking…”, “Just let your mom talk…”, “They just talk in circles, who cares…”, “Don’t worry about it…”, “She’s cuckoo…”, “Just tune it out…”, or my favorite “Just let it go through one ear and out the other.” Hahaha…I ENVIED that he could be so “laid back” with situations that would set me off instantly. And yet, I am considered laid back! Considering the fact that almost everyone I’ve met thinks I am extremely laid back, I decided to explore how to get to my Dad’s level of Zen in all situations. I would say to myself, “There has got to be a way that I can maintain my level of patience across ALL levels. How come I can be the most compassionate teacher and volunteer, but flip out with my family or close friends?” My dad has been modeling this level of patience for years to where I can now see that my own brothers and I have picked up on his level of patience by accident.
I feared that “tuning out” would mean that I wouldn’t listen to others or that thinking people were “cuckoo” would mean that I thought more highly of myself, but rather these were just the endpoints to the mindset that he has already cultivated for himself and the observations he made while in the listening phase.
It turns out my Dad actually listens and observes during these difficult situations where he senses someone else processes in such a way that he cannot relate and vice versa. He may not actually listen to my run-on story about how I spent all day in the sun, playing match after match on the volleyball court, but he is definitely reading into everything when dealing with difficult situations and difficult people. It is very important to understand that in these moments of listening and reading into another person, there are no harbored or festering feelings below the surface. We literally analyze the person, go silent, wait for the storm to subside, and then continue to listen or chime in.
But where did the feelings go? This one took a long time for me to figure out.
My wise nephew looking out at the Capitol Building.
I used to try to force myself to not say anything in rebuttal and it always resulted in seeing the worst in myself (internally or externally). It was only after years of observing how I process information and how others process information, that I was able to let go of frustrating feelings beneath the surface. This is much related to the idea of seeing Christ in each person you meet, or finding a way to be humbled by those that irk you the most. Both required a great amount of meditating, prayer, and reflection in order to rid of the pride that stood in the way of the reasons why the frustrating feelings were there. Yet, some people are able to do this automatically.
And that was my quest. How do the people that I know, such as my Dad, skip to the endpoint almost effortlessly and how can I learn to do this with Jesus in my heart, so as not to come off as ignoring someone or looking down on a person?
Inside the Basilica.
Many experiences throughout my life have played into how I no longer get angry with people below the surface. First off, (as slightly mentioned before) ever since I started praying and meditating regularly I have started to truly look at each person as a child of God with Jesus in his or her heart. Secondly, interacting and spending time with the homeless has taught me that if I can sit and value a homeless person’s story and life experiences, then the same level of respect should be given to the people in my daily life. Lastly, life experiences and divorce have flat out affirmed that actions speak louder than words and if that is the case, then in most instances with people who seem very guarded or defiant, the best antidote is to simply exist in front of them and let them make all the mistakes right before your eyes. With these three points in mind, I no longer feel like the volcano that is going to erupt when trying to listen to someone who processes differently than I. If we can get to this place in our hearts and in our minds, then having patience is a part of life and no longer a painful route that we must take. It is no longer considered a hassle to be around those types of people that you feel you can’t relate to or connect to on a caring and genuine level.
Finding truth…in the Library of Congress.
The last argument of patience where we are the one with the “problem”, not the other, is my favorite because I believe it to the core spiritually! When we feel that we NEED patience in a situation, the source of the anxiety is coming from a part of us that needs to be explored. In Catholic terms, we are facing a challenge within ourselves that will bring us to the next level of our faith and in the end, closer to Jesus.
Working out the Arguments of Patience on a Ten Mile Run around the Monuments in D.C. (Rounding Lake Potomac and approaching the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.)
If each person has Jesus in his or her heart, then we are in that moment feeling God tap us on the shoulder to pay attention a little harder (anxiety is when we resist the “taps” or try not to face them).
Every time we put ourselves in these situations, it is a guarantee that you will be transformed. The trick is to make sure that you have already reached the level of not being angry within or else the moment will inevitably end in a fight or an “agree to disagree” situation. We cannot advance to the level of appreciating these tough interactions with people who process so “differently”. To clarify, we all process differently and there is not a way of processing that is better than the other, but some types of processing are on such ends of the spectrum that when they meet, they require these steps of patience in order to grow closer within the relationship and truly respect each other. Reading into and understanding how someone else processes is the first step prior to practicing the steps of patience. Similar to identifying the source of where our anger comes from, identifying the type of processor helps us to regulate the language that comes out of our mouths and the manner at which we interact with people who we feel we clash with. For me, it’s like identifying what type of learner I have in the classroom and then the way in which I teach caters to them from there on out. Going back to the third argument for or against patience, I actually do not like to refer to the working out part as a problem, because when people say they have a problem that indicates that there is something wrong with them. That would be a prideful way of viewing others, since we ALL have issues to work out.
So I like to focus on the fact that the phrase “we have the problem” really means that there is a part of us that needs to be faced in order to treat people with even more love.
Facing those parts of us. (Ten Mile Run through the Monuments – Capitol Building ahead.)
Sometimes that “part of us” is NOT a negative aspect. For example, for me this vacation with my family forced me to finally listen (read into) and watch my family interact. As I was watching I witnessed what parts of us are the same in our processing and what parts are not. Since I was observing, I was silent and not talking. Normally, I would chime in the conversation, just to be a part of the family. My entire family is full of talkers (like you didn’t know by now)! Since I can remember, you had to fight to get a word in or to share an experience from your day. At times, it seemed that we weren’t even listening to each other – just sharing story after story, debate after debate, joke after joke. Now being older and comfortable with my own life and identity, I did not feel the need to have to chime in and make myself heard. I simply watched the conversations go back and forth. I did not even feel the urge to compete at times and keep up with the stories. When I was younger, the energy in our family felt like you weren’t a part of the family if you didn’t talk or it felt like I didn’t belong if I had nothing to say. I even went as far to the point of “they don’t respect my stories because my girl stories will never compete with the boy stories” (I only have brothers and a very vocal Dad). If we really want to put a label on problems, we would say that my family has the problem, haha! But, as a teacher, and according to Jesus’ teachings, we cannot force people to change; instead, we must do the work by the grace of the Holy Spirit (or the inner dialogue from within) and in that moment, I heard “just watch and listen.” By the end of the week on vacation with the family, my mind was bringing to the surface moments in my life that taught me the same lessonalready. I started to see my newly evolved role in the family through my running experiences (literal running)…well through one running memory in particular…
As I was watching the storm of conversations one night and holding my nephew, I was daydreaming about when I crossed the finish line at the LA Marathon last year. One of my brothers and my parents came to see me cross the Finish Line and they were so worried about getting a good spot to watch me finish (CUT TO the three of them…talking over one another, planting a spot without telling each other, each of them doing their own thing without communicating, watching through the IPAD video recording without looking at the real thing, not wanting to be near too many people or the trashcans…etc), that they missed the whole thing. My sister-in-law compassionately felt bad for me and was wondering what my reaction would be, but when I was running the Marathon, I wasn’t thinking about my family or anyone for that matter. The Marathon was all…about…me, as running naturally becomes after you run for quite some time. The runner’s zone is exactly that! You are in your own world and in your own element. When I was a mile away (Mile 25), I texted my family that I would be crossing, but I didn’t envision them actually seeing me cross the finish line. All that mattered was…that they came. When I chatted in short with my sister-in-law afterward, we had a candid conversation as she congratulated me. I remember sharing with her, “I am just so happy that I crossed the Finish Line and had SO MUCH FUN running the Marathon on my home turf…I’m just glad that they are here. Haha, but this is SO our family.” Lesson learned…and running got me there.
Metaphorically, I’ve been running FOR myself for the past five years and when we run for ourselves in life, we no longer need anything from anyone else, even in the smallest connections with people.
We no longer place expectations on people or try to conform them to make conversation easier for us. Thus, patience is a natural exuberance that goes into effect when you ask for it instead of forcing it upon yourself. Do all people strive to realize these notions in life? No. Not even people in your own family and some realize it later in life when you only have three years left with them. And that is exactly why I like to study how people process experiences and information.
Now flying high in the air and flying high in life, I see the benefits of all my life experiences and the conversations I’ve had with the many people that I’ve met. I’m always learning and taking in those little bits of Jesus that I can pick up along the way. In the end, patience does not require explaining, teaching, showing, or convincing. Patience is based on silence and following silence comes action. What you decide to do with the patience is up to you. We can either choose words wisely after calling in patience, or simply exist in front of the person and let them ware him or herself out, much like letting a baby cry and cry until they fall fast asleep.
I tend to lean more on the belief that actions speak louder than words.
In a world of men, this works like a charm. No words are necessary when it comes to interacting with the men in my family. If you truly want to know what this looks like, it means that I just beat my Dad in pool a couple times in a row and outran my brother up a hill. I don’t feel bad at all for beating them and they love that about me! They are the ones who trained me and provided me with every skill to hang and ultimately connect with them on “their level”… and yet it all manifested naturally (take that as far back as you want…back to the divorce, back to growing up, back to the Marathon) – no competitive under layer, just playing in a bar and going out for a run… the weather was nice and the angles were accurate. In both scenarios, we were both simply going for the bottle opener at the same time – breaking that ice, letting the snow melt away, and connecting core to core no matter the layers of soul fabric that have been added on top over the years.
I hope that this confession of personal processing knocks out some anxiety in your heart and helps you apply the lessons learned even within your own family, where sometimes it is the hardest to face. I pray that we choose to read into the small cracks within these relationships and fill them with love as we all continue to seek the better versions of ourselves amidst a world that at times doesn’t look like it’s on our side. But… when running FOR yourself, the world is always on your side. It becomes a place where people are seekers like you, siblings are on the same journey, parents are protective and supportive, friends are like family, and patience is a natural ability.
Part of the Contreras Clan outside the White House…until next time..
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“Breathe”
by: Telepopmusik
I brought you some something close to me
And left with something new
I can see through your head
You haunt my dreams
But theres nothing to do but believe
Just believe
Just breathe
Another day
Just believe
Another day
Just breathe
Another day
Just believe
Another day
Just breathe
I’m used to it by now
Another day
Just believe
Just breathe
Just believe
Just breathe
Lying in my bed
Staring at the ceiling
Just breathe
Another day
Another day
Just believe
Another day
I’ m used to it by now
I’ m used to it by now
Just breathe
Just believe
Just breathe
Just believe
Just breathe
Just believe
Just believe
Just breathe
Just believe
Another day
Just believe
Another day
Just believe
Another day
Just breathe
Another day
Just breathe
I dont believe
Another day
Another day
Another day
“Another day…just believe…Another day…just breathe”… Telepopmusik can be inhaled with such ease. The lighthearted carefree tones bounce into your soul one measure at a time. No one forces you to listen to this song, but rather you take it in without noticing. Like traveling, it transforms you the moment you take a breath, whether you wanted the fabric of your soul to be changed or not. You find yourself shaking out the anxiety of life from your head unwinding, to your shoulders decompressing, to your stomach unclenching, to your toes freely wiggling. Much like the bounce of a melody playing through your mind on repeat, reflections and insights flutter through my mind regularly no matter where I go. Up in the air at the moment, 36,000 feet above the Midwest, my mind is processing the trip I just took to visit my brother and his family in Maryland and Washington D.C. At the same time, my heart peels away at the processed notions and ideas that bloom from this reflective state. My heart sifts through each strand. The strands of new information are cleansed much like how the cleaner shrimp eat the parasites off of a fish nearby (yes, that is a connection to one of my 4th Grade Science Lessons). The parasitic thoughts or negative thoughts of the trip are tossed into a part of my mind that will later be carefully analyzed (haha, which is now). The new, positive feedback from the trip will be stitched into the fabric of my soul with individual colors of their own identity.
In my family, I would consider us simultaneous processors and thinkers. We tend to take in information from experiences quickly and we sort it immediately into negative and positive information. Depending on how much pride is in the way, the positive information is quickly applied to the fabric of the soul. On average, we move over and cleanse the negative feedback fairly quickly, right after sifting through it, which is why I consider it to be simultaneous. This allows us to transform and adapt fast to difficult situations. This is good and bad. Good because we are constantly open to evolving and changing our mindsets to relate and connect with others on a genuine level – no fake responses in a world where small talk is our “in” to luring you into a deeper conversation about life and who you are to the core. However, the “simultaneous processing” has negative effects on people when it happens during a conversation. We get so excited about a particular realization or transformation that just happened in the conversation, that we tend to communicate it right there and then, which usually causes friction with whomever we are in a conversation with. This can look like “not listening” (when really we are reflecting on the person’s words and transferring it to the next thought), it can look like “moving on” (where we do not like to dwell on a notion that we’ve already learned or just talked about with the person), and it can look like “talking over” (where we want the other person in the conversation to bounce to the next idea with us).
As I watched my family spend time together this week, I decided to study how we all interact and compare it with how others process information. In short, my whole family is actually fully aware of how we process information. Instances that illustrated this conclusion were small and I used to completely miss it. For example, we get silent while a person is talking or thinking of their next thought. Some of the silence is while we are talking. I noticed that my family is almost not listening to their own words and reading into the other person in the conversation as we are talking. We are already picking up on the other person’s mannerisms, comfort or discomfort in the conversation, etc. I am aware that we all do this, but breaking down the people that I know so well, helps to explain the difference between ALL processors. This “silence” happens so fast, but we are silent the same amount of time that other people are silent – it’s just done during the conversation as we are consciously reading into everything about the person. Based on what we pick up on, we will rattle on or go silent. This is the part where our family needed work. There were times when we heard in our hearts “just stop”, but we chose not to stop for misunderstood reasons as stated before. Then, there is an amount of faith that goes into it, where as we talk we just trust that what is coming out of our mouths has already been prepared in our heads and hearts, so that part just flows. When we get silent for longer periods of time in a conversation, the whole goal is to show respect or make someone feel at ease amongst the energy of the Contreras Clan. 
This type of observing, or longer periods of silence used to never happen consistently in our family, and now that it does I am able to see the level of patience that it takes to just observe instead of talk, to listen instead of share, to read into instead of confront, and to ask questions instead of answer. To get to this level of patience, we had to get to a level of respect, and to get to this level of respect, we had to be comfortable with ourselves and rely on the other half of our family values, which believes that actions speak louder than words.
In the past, I made the mistake of talking to people assuming we were the same way or that we should all process a specific way due to my own beliefs about efficiency. To explain the reasoning behind this further, after the first year of teaching, I was impressed with how children picked up on the way others process and can categorize and how they would label themselves as a certain type of processor by comparing themselves to others in the classroom without feeling insecure – just pure observations and conclusions. Even more fascinating was how the majority of the class adhered to my way of processing, when I did not teach them or demand that they do so. By the end of the year, we all become connected on a level similar to family because of this interaction. Everyone in the classroom still learns according to their own manner, gifts, and abilities, but the level of reflection and thinking about our thinking (metacognition) tends to be the same by the end of the year. This allows us as teachers to run efficient classrooms and build close knit, trusting relationships whether it’s student-to-student or student to teacher. As we say in the education world, the students become yours and you become theirs. On a broader scope, adults have the same potential to build such relationships and we should choose to get to this point in life to not just build trusting friendships and good relations in the work field, but to ultimately grow and evolve together in our family cores. 
Similarly to the leading force in the classroom, the energy of a family goes back to its genetics and will always be the connecting piece to the family puzzle. As families change over time, patience guided by love, is needed to change together and maintain those trusting bonds. Friction in the family core affects the individual whether we see it or not. If we truly believe in becoming closer to God, living at our highest potential, loving others, seeing Jesus in others, and so on and so forth, then to go forward we must first master respecting our family members on a genuine level and NOT on a forced level.
Sometimes that “part of us” is NOT a negative aspect. For example, for me this vacation with my family forced me to finally listen (read into) and watch my family interact. As I was watching I witnessed what parts of us are the same in our processing and what parts are not. Since I was observing, I was silent and not talking. Normally, I would chime in the conversation, just to be a part of the family. My entire family is full of talkers (like you didn’t know by now)! Since I can remember, you had to fight to get a word in or to share an experience from your day. At times, it seemed that we weren’t even listening to each other – just sharing story after story, debate after debate, joke after joke. Now being older and comfortable with my own life and identity, I did not feel the need to have to chime in and make myself heard. I simply watched the conversations go back and forth. I did not even feel the urge to compete at times and keep up with the stories. When I was younger, the energy in our family felt like you weren’t a part of the family if you didn’t talk or it felt like I didn’t belong if I had nothing to say. I even went as far to the point of “they don’t respect my stories because my girl stories will never compete with the boy stories” (I only have brothers and a very vocal Dad). If we really want to put a label on problems, we would say that my family has the problem, haha! But, as a teacher, and according to Jesus’ teachings, we cannot force people to change; instead, we must do the work by the grace of the Holy Spirit (or the inner dialogue from within) and in that moment, I heard “just watch and listen.” By the end of the week on vacation with the family, my mind was bringing to the surface moments in my life that taught me the same lesson already. I started to see my newly evolved role in the family through my running experiences (literal running)…well through one running memory in particular…
As I was watching the storm of conversations one night and holding my nephew, I was daydreaming about when I crossed the finish line at the LA Marathon last year. One of my brothers and my parents came to see me cross the Finish Line and they were so worried about getting a good spot to watch me finish (CUT TO the three of them…talking over one another, planting a spot without telling each other, each of them doing their own thing without communicating, watching through the IPAD video recording without looking at the real thing, not wanting to be near too many people or the trashcans…etc), that they missed the whole thing. My sister-in-law compassionately felt bad for me and was wondering what my reaction would be, but when I was running the Marathon, I wasn’t thinking about my family or anyone for that matter. The Marathon was all…about…me, as running naturally becomes after you run for quite some time. The runner’s zone is exactly that! You are in your own world and in your own element. When I was a mile away (Mile 25), I texted my family that I would be crossing, but I didn’t envision them actually seeing me cross the finish line. All that mattered was…that they came. When I chatted in short with my sister-in-law afterward, we had a candid conversation as she congratulated me. I remember sharing with her, “I am just so happy that I crossed the Finish Line and had SO MUCH FUN running the Marathon on my home turf…I’m just glad that they are here. Haha, but this is SO our family.” Lesson learned…and running got me there.
In a world of men, this works like a charm. No words are necessary when it comes to interacting with the men in my family. If you truly want to know what this looks like, it means that I just beat my Dad in pool a couple times in a row and outran my brother up a hill. I don’t feel bad at all for beating them and they love that about me! They are the ones who trained me and provided me with every skill to hang and ultimately connect with them on “their level”… and yet it all manifested naturally (take that as far back as you want…back to the divorce, back to growing up, back to the Marathon) – no competitive under layer, just playing in a bar and going out for a run… the weather was nice and the angles were accurate.
In both scenarios, we were both simply going for the bottle opener at the same time – breaking that ice, letting the snow melt away, and connecting core to core no matter the layers of soul fabric that have been added on top over the years.