It’s entirely possible that the phrase “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” is just a song and is meant to remind us to reframe a task we may not want to do, in order to make it more bearable or more fun.
But we may have taken it all a bit too far, in that some of us, our communities, our workplaces, and our cultures, have found that a spoonful of sugar isn’t the exception when we are coating something to make it more palatable, but rather, that we are actually living in the sugar canister making everything taste sweeter, just so we don’t have to feel anything at all.
I have written often about the dangerous dynamic of not showing up for lives as ourselves. We have sets of skills and traits for the work setting, which may change when we are socializing, or when interacting with different groups of people. If we are grieving, we have even more hats to juggle. Such dis-jointed living is not benign. In fact, keeping parts of us compartmentalized or “separate” sounds a lot like being “dis-integrated” which by definition, means something like falling apart.
But for this chat, I am not focused on the many ways which we sugar coat our lives to make them livable. Instead, I have a kinder, more loving message to share. The message, is that sugar coating, as evidenced by this fun little song from Mary Poppins, is probably a learned behavior. We weren’t born looking around thinking “Yeah, this living in a body thing is ok, but I bet it would all be a lot sweeter if I poured some sugar, aka, alcohol, money, gambling, sex, drugs, gaming, spending, obsessing, excessive binging all over it.”
A suggestion was made to us, via children’s movies and countless other mediums, that sweetening up whatever might be sour is a valiant goal. We learned that “sour = bad” and “sweet = good.” We found that in order to do hard things, sprinkling a little sugar (or soaking in it) makes doing them easier. And sure, running toward pleasure and running from pain, is part of our hard wired nervous system response to our environment. But there is a chance, we have taken it this to the extreme.
If you are the rare exception, who never sprinkles sugar on the medicine you have to swallow and you are gritty enough, present enough, vulnerable enough and accepting enough to take it straight then to you I say, ”Nicely done.”
But for the rest of us, who are still clinging, reaching, and searching for ways to make our lives all a bit sweeter, like having that extra desert after dinner, checking our smart phones while in the middle of a tough conversation, or endlessly watching sports or binge TV to keep us from actually being where we are, to you I say, “Here’s some good news:”
We can bring awareness to our habit of wrapping hard things in a coating of sugar to make them doable, and make different choices. I have an incredible sweet tooth, and I have my favorite binge worthy TV series, but I also have a sense of when I am “enjoying” vs. when I am “sugar coating.”
When I have this sense, I then have the chance to ask myself why I am doing something that needs sweetening at all. And if applicable, I can also ask myself if I believe doing hard things shouldn’t feel hard.
When I get curious, instead of staying asleep in my habitual patterns, I learn new things about myself. I learn that while I may have a preference for things to feel smooth and easy, doing hard things does not kill me, and in fact makes me stronger. I learn that showing up as myself, with my experiences and my voice is all ok for me. It can also be a lot less work than tailoring my personality to fit the event of the moment.
Others may not love this “straight-up-no-chaser” version of me since they may be used to the sugar coated version of me, also known as “Lisa from the Candy Shoppe” – a name given to me in my college days while working on campus. I earned it by being “super friendly” and nice to patrons.
I am not always sweet now, but I am honest. And as I practice being “Lisa from actual life” instead of “Lisa from the Candy Shoppe” I work at not only accepting the repulsive medicine I must swallow, but running right toward it with a “Bring it On!” attitude. Of course, since I am human, I still reach for a spoonful of sugar now and again, but when I do, I try to see it for what it is and not sugar coat THAT too!