teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach
you best. There may be a Juan or Juanita in your life,
and Juan or Juanita is the one who gets you going.
They’re the ones who don’t go away: your mother,
your husband, your wife, your lover, your child, the
person that you have to work with every single day,
part of the situation you can’t escape.
These situations really teach you because there’s
no pat solution to the problem. You’re continually
meeting your match. You’re always coming into a
challenge, coming up against your edge. There’s no
way that someone else can tell you exactly what to
do, because you’re the only one who knows where it’s
torturing you, where your relationship with Juan or
Juanita is getting into your guts. Others don’t know.
They don’t know when you need to be more gentle,
when you need to be more clear, when you need to be
quiet, and when you need to speak.
No one else knows what it takes for another person
to open the door. For some people, speaking out is
opening the door a little wider; for other people,
being still is opening the door a little wider. It all has
to do with what your ancient habitual reaction is to
being in a tight spot and what is going to soften the
whole thing and cause you to have a change of atti-
tude. It’s the Juans and Juanitas who present us with
these dilemmas, these challenges.
Basically the only way you can communicate with
the Juans and Juanitas in your life is by taking the
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