Knocking Down Mailboxes, and Common Humanity

There is now an infamous story in my family of how early one morning on my way to work, I hugged a curb too tight coming out of my neighborhood and scratched along the side of my new car, somehow leaving thousands of dollars of damage…and the mailbox untouched.  The mailbox was just fine! I went back after work, prepared to write a note and have to pay for the mailbox, but there it stood completely unscathed, a strange miraculous mailbox that could damage a car but still stand strong.  This story is made more outrageous because I had just gotten my car back the day before from all the repairs done from wrecking it.  This was a low moment in my car driving confidence.  I think most people that knew me well were a little concerned about my driving abilities at that point.  To be fair, I had not had a car incident, or accident, since high school, decades before.  But wrecking a car twice, a brand new one, was embarrassing to say the least.  

Hitting a mailbox causes a lot of laughs, and it should! It is self inflicted damage.  In the cracks between the humor, I did also have old familiar shame narratives triggered, “what is wrong with me?” as I processed this new legacy of battling mailboxes with my car.  I felt pretty bad about hitting that mailbox, and wondered, the place I go to when I am in self doubt, what must be wrong with me that I hit it. I knew the road was narrow to turn on, there was always oncoming traffic, and the mailbox jutted out into the street, a recipe for collision.  However, was I the only one who would hit this thing?  

This is, essentially, the question I hear all the time.  What is wrong with me? Am I the only one? Does anyone else struggle with this?  And this series of common questions doubles our pain and doubles our struggle. It layers shame on top of pain. Whatever it is we are battling, in our pain and hopeless moments, we do often believe we are the only one.  So, now we have two problems: our struggle and the fact that we are the only people messed up enough to deal with this.  The truth is, that there is nothing, no struggle, that could come upon us humans that someone else has not also encountered.  There is almost palpable pressure released in the therapy room when someone hears, sometimes, for the first time, that they are NOT the only one.  There is deep comfort in knowing you are not alone.  We can call this idea  “common humanity.”  It is an essential ingredient of self-compassion (along with self-kindness and mindfulness). We must know we are not the only ones in order to extend ourselves this gentleness.  Common humanity helps us to see this essential truth: “Our successes and failures come and go - they neither define us nor do they determine our worthiness.” Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion.

Now back to this mailbox.  I have had an ongoing healing relationship with this ridiculous mailbox since I first encountered it with the side of my new car.  I always check in on it as I drive by, I don’t notice the other mailboxes so much. I should name the mailbox at this point. It is a frequent teacher, because here is the crazy part, week by week goes by and this poor mailbox has been knocked and hit over and over.  It often looks like a cartoon with its box part spun around.  The angle and shape it is left in are almost always different, but it is clear, it has been knocked again by a car, and by the person driving that car.  The first time I saw this, I texted my husband, “It wasn’t just me! Someone else hit the mailbox!”  It has happened so often now that it is a family joke and we all look for it, my husband even sent me a picture of a new hit to it when I was on a trip.  Each time I see it, the truth of common humanity: I am not the only human to hit this this mailbox, I am not the only one, is reemphasized for me.  And then I think about who must have been the most recent person to encounter this mailbox, and I have compassion, thinking, oh I know the feeling of encountering that mailbox with my car. I am much more able to give compassion to others that I give to myself. How can we really love our neighbors as ourselves, when we don’t really treat ourselves that well. This doesn’t change that I damaged my car, but it does help soften how I view myself and others, in relation to that.  It is easier to be kind when I know I am not the only one. 

It apparently got so bad with this mailbox that the owners changed the direction of the entire thing, meaning that it is now parallel to the sidewalk it hung off of, not perpendicular and jutting out into the road.  But even still, tonight as I drove home, the poor mailbox was completely bent over in a way I had never seen it, practically doing a backbend at this point. And I thought about the person who hit it and laughed with compassion for them, hoping they had compassion for themselves too, and hoped they would soon also learn, they are not the only ones.

Read More:

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Kristin Neff, Ph.D.

Daring Greatly, Brené Brown, Ph.D.