Patterns

Rio and I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tonight. We tried to. What ended up happening was that I stumbled into some old patterns, and learnt that my five year old is way less prone to disappointment than his thirty six year old father.

This was our second attempt to see the film. The first time, Rio feel asleep less than half way into the movie. The commercials and previews went on for a solid twenty minutes, so by the time the movie was playing, he was half asleep already.

This time we picked a seven o’clock showing at our local rep cinema, the Roxy on Quadra, expecting to avoid previews altogether. We had it all planned: get there just as the movie was starting, buy a humongous box of popcorn, and get through as much as the film as we could.

Good plan.

We arrived to learn that that theatre had been booked for a private function. My dander got up immediately: I had checked their web site yesterday, and even called their recorded message this morning to double check that the film was on. What can you do? I wasn’t very polite, explaining (lying) that my five year old was disappointed. He wasn’t. He just wanted to know what the new plan was.

We drove.

I called Kat and got her to check the movie listings. The only other place in town where Harry Potter was playing was the Imax. Show time: 7pm. It was a few minutes to seven. This still might work out.

Drive too fast downtown, circle the block looking for parking. I can feel my pulse quicken. This is for fun, I remind myself. Run for the Museum of Natural History that houses the Imax, Rio padding along as best he can. Doors locked. Grumble. It’s a few minutes after seven. Apparently they close the doors as soon as the show starts. Cuss. Think uncharitable thoughts.

Now what? Rio wants to know, without a hint of malice or disappointment in his voice.

I call Kat again; ask if she’s sure that there are no other places showing Harry Potter. Yup, she’s sure. I float a plan: rent a movie and watch it at her place. She warns me that Rio has to be in bed early because it’s a school day tomorrow. I grumble, and she pushes back, and I can feel us slipping towards a disagreement, before we both catch ourselves. “Lets just see what happens…”

What would you like to do? I ask Rio. He taps his head. “My brain is tellin’ me something’,” he says. “Lets buy Scooby Doo!” I tell him I can’t take Scooby Doo tonight. “How about we rent an old Harry Potter?” He taps his head and agrees.

Off we go. The first Rogers Video we visit doesn’t have any Harry Potter movies. More impatience on my part, now because I’m afraid that time is slipping away.

I say to Rio, “this experience is telling us a story. We just have to figure out what it is.”

The next Rogers has one that we haven’t seen in a while so we take it, along with some Microwave Popcorn (yes, yes, the stuff is poison. We don’t eat it every night….) and beat feet for Kat’s place.

When we’re finally settled, its after 8, and we skip through some scenes and watch between shovelling mouthfuls of popcorn into our faces, and soon Kat announces its fifteen minutes to bed time.

Rio, Silas and I snuggle for a few minutes on the couch, huddled under a blanket during a scary part, and that’s it. The timer goes off, and the boys are dispatched to brush their teeth and hit the hay.

What story is this experience telling me?

Patterns. Wired responses based on past behaviour, past responses to situations, to people, to experiences. My patters are to become impatient, to feel frustrated with incompetence, to feel disappointment when things don’t go according to plan. I get attached to the plan, to the experience that the plan will lead to.

Rio felt none of this. He just went with the flow, and eventually lead his father to do the same.

Patterns. We fall into them based on our experience of the past. The neural network in our brains keeps firing as it always has because its easiest to do so – repeated behaviour creates these neural pathways from recurring use. Trying to rewire the brain is hard, because we’re fighting against long term conditioning, and because to do so requires us to imagine a new behaviour often without having ever experienced it. The brain likes doing what it always has because it can follow a well worn rut. To break out of that rut, or runnel, requires us to create a reality out of nothing but imagination.

That’s why its helpful to have someone to show you how to bump your way out of the rut. Like a five year old who simply doesn’t know what disappointment or attachment to an outcome is. Who was happy to have what ever experience we were having, as long as we were having it together.