When I was little, my mother taught me to never touch the hot stove. “It’s hot, very hot, and you’ll hurt yourself,” she’d say and I would never touch the stove. Unfortunately, I didn’t apply this important advice to other hot objects and managed to burn myself playing with matches when I was about five years old. The flame created a big welt on my thumb and I hid it it from my mom fearing she’d be angry with me. I never once thought that maybe, had I not concealed my injury and my pain, my mom could help me, kiss it and make it better or at least put some ointment on it. Instead, I learned to keep touching the “hot stove” and tolerate the pain rather than face anger or disappointment from someone I love.
There are a lot of different issues here but today we’re talking about the hot stove, or any other object of danger. Fact is: I keep touching the hot stove even though I know with great certainty that the hot stove will cause injury. I have seen the proof and the impact on my life over and over again and yet I keep putting my hand into the flame.
Why not avoid the object of danger? After years of soul-searching, I’m still not sure why. Some have suggested – I don’t love myself enough, I have low self-esteem, I am co-dependent, I have abandonment issues and the list goes on. There are so many possible explanations, but regardless of the reason, I ignore the heat and keep getting burned.
A quick story that relates to this issue: many moons ago, I worked as a cook and, typical of kitchens back then, I worked with a bunch of guys who gave me a pretty hard time. They were always doing some new, horrible thing to me or “making” me do things I didn’t want to do; one of these things was the game of “slap the flat top,” a burnerless flat cooking surface. In their game, everyone had to slap the flat top as many times as they could before the heat became unbearable. I had no interest in playing this game, but knew they would torture me relentlessly if I didn’t do want they wanted. So, over and over and over, I slapped the flat top, regardless of how hot it was or if my hand was hurting, simply so maybe they’d leave me alone. I never once considered simply saying “no” and walking away from their game. Nor did I realize that the more I complied with them, the more hot stoves I would encounter in my future.
I still don’t know why, but I continue to touch the hot stove. I never learned that I had any other choice and keep hoping that if I endure the heat, then maybe, just maybe, I will eventually get the peace and happiness I deserve. Strangely, I’ve never considered that I have another choice: do what feels good and avoid what feels bad.
The hot stove is the biggest challenge I face in my journey. I’m learning to avoid the pain, but sometimes I still walk into the flames and hurt myself and forget that there is another choice: don’t touch the stove when it’s hot. Easy, right?