Playing Bottom

Do you remember the scene in You’ve Got Mail where Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox have the email exchange about comebacks? He says, “Do you ever feel you’ve become the worst version of yourself? That a Pandora’s box of all the secret, hateful parts – your arrogance, your spite, your condescension – has sprung open? Someone upsets you and instead of smiling and moving on, you zing them.” She replies that she’s jealous because she can never figure out how to reply in these situations. Fox suggests that he should like to give her his ability to reflexively reply with zingers then cautions, “I must warn you that when you finally have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say at the moment you mean to say it, remorse inevitably follows.”

Too true, Mr. F-O-X.

There’s a situation that’s come up recently that I feel pretty terribly about. I let another person’s actions dictate my own -- and ducked out of a situation when the invitation was to engage and heal and grow.

I shared a bit of the story with a friend who responded kindly. I doubt it’s as bad as all that. Then, the friend offered this wisdom: “we all do play bottom sometimes.”

Part of the human condition, perhaps, to find ourselves behaving as less than what we are capable of. And with that a bit of oxygen, an exhale, a glimmer of self-compassion -- the opportunity to choose differently next time.