Havaya Metakenet

What’s that jibberish in the subject line you ask?

(at least a select number of you are asking this)

It’s a much used saying in Hebrew. And a pretty good saying, if you ask me.

If you’re curious what it looks like in hebrew (just in case you want to tattoo it on your ass and not have an embarrassing mistake):

חוויה מתקנת

A recent email conversation with Marie brought up this phrase, and she suggested I write a blog post about it.

I have a tendency to listen to Marie’s suggestions, and anyway, otherwise most of today’s post would be me squeeing happily at the fact that shmerson is back. So, here we go.

Havaya = Experience

Metakenet = fixing, or repairing

Literally translated – “A repairing experience.”

What it is in practice is when you experience something absolutely terrible, or traumatic, and then either go into the same experience again determined to make it enjoyable, or without your determination, it becomes enjoyable. Your experience is repaired, and your trauma, as a result, is healed.

Let’s take a theoretical example: You eat sushi for the first time, the place where you eat it – the service is terrible and you end up having stomach cramps and other general ickiness. You swear off sushi for good.

Two years later your best friend tells you that you absolutely HAVE to go to this sushi place with her. It’s amazing, you’ll love it.

You resist. You pound your fists. You don’t want to do it.

Somehow – you get guilted into to doing it anyway.

You go into the restaurant. You order sushi because you have no choice. You pinch your nose, you take a bite – and it’s one of the yummiest things you’ve ever tasted.

You’re still skeptical. You give it 15 minutes to make sure all is well in your gastro-intestinal area. And all is.

You have one of the best meals of your life – made up purely of sushi.

Havaya Metakenet.

See – the problem is, that I think that most human beings are hard-wired to avoid situations that have been bad in the past. I also think that in this community of ours, we are even more prone to that, because, well, here, we’re not talking about sushi.

We’re talking about loss. We’re talking about grief. Anger. Jealousy. Trauma.

I will never ever be caught dead in the women’s clinic where I was first diagnosed with a blighted ovum. Never. In fact, I wanted to avoid it so much I switched health care providers. I wanted so little to do with that place I changed all of my doctors so I would never have to see that logo again.

I see a commercial for this company and I sometimes still get angry. The fact that Shmerson hasn’t switched providers yet and I still see their logo in the mail every once in a while makes me angry.

I get trauma. And I don’t think I’ll ever want to have a “havaya metakenet” with those assholes.

But I think we all need to be a bit more open to the concept of creating more “repairing experiences” in our lives.

I’m not saying we need to force ourselves into situations that we have found to be traumatic in the past.

What I’m saying is – if we find ourselves in that situation again, we should – from the outset – make an effort to make it a “havaya metakenet.”

And I mean go all out.

In my post a couple of days ago I quoted from an early draft of this post – about how I’m determined to make the next pregnancy a Havaya Metakenet. I won’t repeat those words here, because for those of you who have read it, you know that comes with so many roadblocks. But that doesn’t mean that my determination isn’t there.

But even if it’s not grandiose –  I think there are things all of us can do.

We all have places that we are scared to go, situations that we are afraid to put ourselves in, simply from the fear of the feelings those things may stir up.

But what if we all made a collective conscious decision to re-frame those types of experiences? To make something dreaded no longer dreaded?

Think of how much easier this precarious journey would be.

I’m not saying we can all just wave magic wands and make baby showers magically fun. Or go to a restaurant where we had food poisoning and all of the sudden love it.

What I’m saying is this:

In the past few months, I have been determined to break through my old fears and bad habits. In fact, I think these last six months have been one long “havaya metakenet” for me – to make up for 13+ years of crap.

So – I’m throwing down a challenge ladies.

Next time you’re up against a potentially challenging experience, see if you can make it a havaya metakenet instead.

It may make this road we’re all traveling on just tiny bit less bumpy. (wow, that was a cheesy closing line, wasn’t it? I promise to provide you with a less cheesy closing line tomorrow as a havaya metakenet).

Tags: postaday2011, random