Fix You?

I routinely have a short list of songs that I listen to on repeat (and I only listen to music when I drive, but since I commute a couple of days a week this means lots of listening to a handful of songs each week). Lately Coldplay’s Fix You as been at the top of this list. I’ve been thinking about what it is to fix someone, what it is to long to be fixed, and, frankly, about the futility of both.

And then lo and behold I read two interesting posts on this topic this week. The Extraordinary Ordinary writes about the inability to really fix others (even citing my current favorite song, making me feel both not alone and not original) through the specific lens of concerned motherhood. And Kelly Diels writes beautifully in her post about not being put on earth as a corrective action.

Both posts made me think, and also reminded me of the way the universe tends to support conversations that need to be happening in this way. I thought about the ways in which we cannot, in fact, protect our children from dangers both internal and external to them. But I thought even more about the stuff Kelly was thinking about, and kept returning to one of her sentences, again and again:

I am going to meet you where you are.

Oh what a great reminder this is of what we ought to strive for in our relationships. I am going to hear Kelly’s voice in my head this weekend and hopefully for a long while. I am going to try to remember that the world does not, in fact, need me holding the handle in order to keep spinning (oh Elizabeth Gilbert, did you get that right!). To remember that people are who they are mostly because that is who they are, not because of anything to do with me. To try to accept the light and the dark that exists inside everyone – even, gasp, myself! – because to do otherwise is frustrating for me and, probably, hurtful for them.

I wonder, though, where the line is between useful, productive self-improvement and accepting the self. I know few things better than that expansive, hopeful feeling of: yes, that is a good point, thank you for seeing me so clearly, let me do a better job with X and Y. I’m not saying we should not listen to others’ input and strive to be better and more mature. In fact I think “self-acceptance” can often be code for not trying to overcome our flaws or redirect bad patterns of behavior. But how to do this while retaining a fundamental commitment to our self-worth? That is the tension I don’t quite know how to navigate.

I’ve been thinking about the Time Traveler’s Wife lately, a book I love, probably because the movie came out today. That book to me is a beautiful meditation on accepting people for who they are, limitations and all. It is about loving someone, warts and all, and being willing to embrace all of the things about them that make them who they are, even the uncomfortable and inconvenient ones. A good lesson for us all.

I suppose, really, all of this focus on relationships with others is just a prelude to working on the relationship with self. As Jung said, the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely (I throw Jung out in a way that sounds like I might know others of his theories but I don’t, I just know and love that single quotations). Maybe I feel like working to accept others fully, to honor their complexities, is the first step towards offering myself that kind of forgiveness and love. Not an easy thing for me to do. I guess I can’t fix anyone else, and nobody else can fix me. But is it possible that I don’t actually need fixing?