When you remember the “why” – actually the needs you hope to meet in your life, then empathy as a strategy becomes joyful, or at least rewarding. It is where your strength lies. If you can trust that you can transform the messy and sloppy words dumped into your world, the more you will want it. You can easily compost the ugliness into something life-giving. It really is that easy. The metaphor works.
There is a formula for success with the worms and their composting. Carbon (brown), nitrogen (green), air and water are the components. There are suggestions or directions on how to apply these, the order and proportions, but in my experience it is not that complicated or essential that it is followed exactly in the order. Just stick to the components and over time it will all work out.
When transforming relationships, there is also a formula, a structure, the ingredients. The mechanics I was referring to. Remembering that helps. You don’t have to figure it out right away. You can just look at you sheet and it tells you what to do and in what order (generally speaking). In short, they are observations, feelings, needs and requests. If you keep your messy conversations within these four topics, the result will be a helpful foundation in which to grow your relationships. As with the worm bins, I find that the order here isn’t really necessary – and sometimes not possible, just don’t throw other stuff in there. Stick to the four components and give it time.
I would like to emphasize one difference between the worms and us humans. For the worms the work is simple. They know what to do. They have not been raised out of their true nature. They don’t have to remember that they like what we call clutter. They enjoy the food dumped on their heads. To be honest, the worms aren’t even in the bins to begin with, they find their way there. Like a pile of leaves after a rainstorm, the worms somehow find their way to feast on the slimy bottom of the pile.
You and I were trained to survive in a punitive culture. We have learned to look for who is to blame and where the fault lies. We are trained to name and ‘other’ each other. We must find our way back to our true nature. This transformation process of empathy and non-violent communication mechanisms is how we find our way back to being fully human again. Raising our children in this new soil will lead to them growing up in the no-smelly, no-drama, super-connected and rich soil that you produce day after day.
Be the worm.
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