Good is Just More Interesting
How does the way you tell the story change if you assume you were in an impossible situation?
SOMETIMES, SITTING IN THE TORRENT OF ANXIETY typical in a day in the life of a psychotherapist–it’s amazing how the ripple effects of political chaos settle in people’s bank accounts, retirement plans, and rattled nervous systems—I wonder if there is some other therapist, sitting in an alternate-universe office, where clients are worry-free and happy about where we’re at. But those folks probably don’t go to therapy.
Like many of my clients, I’m struggling with what we’ve been dealt in this moment of historical tumult. I’m turning to ancestors for wisdom. In 2001, Toni Morrison, brilliant angel, gave an interview with Juan Williams. He asked the question: “How do you survive whole in a world where we’re all victims of something?”
Off the top of her head, without even a stray “um,” she responded: “Sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt. It's not about that solution. It is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances. It's that, that makes it elegant. Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding. Evil is silly, it may be horrible, but at the same time it's not a compelling idea. It's predictable. It needs a tuxedo, it needs a headline, it needs blood, it needs fingernails. It needs all that costume in order to get anybody's attention. But the opposite, which is survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually if not spiritually, and they certainly are spiritually. This is a more fascinating job. We are already born, we are going to die. So you have to do something interesting that you respect in between.”
These words perfectly capture the project engaging us as healers and good people in this era collapsing under the weight of its confusions. I love her sentence: “It is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances” (my italics). With overwhelmed clients I find myself reframing adversity with a question: “How does the way you tell the story change if you assume you were in an impossible situation?” If it's an impossible situation, you can't blame or self-judge or pathologize as readily--that second dart of cruel interpretation is gone--because everybody is floundering and grasping; it’s just the suffering endemic to the human condition; the ground for meaning-making. Supporting new therapists, in particular, when they're mired in these exploitative settings with harsh work expectations, I ask: "What happens when we accept it's an impossible situation, and we did nothing wrong?" The situation still sucks. But we don’t.
BUT I’M NOT A NIHILIST. NOT EXACTLY. Think back on your own life: Every situation once considered “impossible” eventually becomes something else. Lurking within every impossible situation there’s something we can’t see yet: heroes working behind curtains; creative and improbable adaptations; an earth-rocking variable we didn’t know existed; or maybe an uneasy acceptance. But that word, “impossible,” can act as a placeholder for grace.
In this dark moment, we all deserve grace.
INSPIRATIONS
We should keep our feet on the ground to signify that nothing is beneath us, but we should also lift up our eyes to say nothing is beyond us.
SEAMUS HEANEY
I realized long ago that everything I have had to heal from has taught me to become a fortress of both strength and softness. That to reclaim our freedom, we need to become both silk and sword. To find the keys to the cages they are determined to keep us in, we need to be strategic with what we have learned from our pain. We have worked too hard to become prey all over again. Everything that haunts you is also an army that you lead. Every wound that aches is also what forged you from need. What is trying to hurt you has no idea what you are capable of surviving. What is trying to make you bleed does not know of what you have already survived.
NIKITA GILL
Everything that is tearing us down today will become a memory, and this memory will be shared as an anecdote or a story or a poem or a play or a warning. It will be shared with another human being, who will then understand that he is not alone in his sadness. This is why we show up for others and tell our tales and listen to others. The great congregation meets daily, and you are someone’s angel today.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.
SUSAN SONTAG