Being Vulnerable with Friends
Posted on February 24, 2021 Leave a Comment
One of the more pernicious side effects of our mediagenic age is how one dimensionally perfect the lives of individuals appear to those on the other side of the screen, prompting feelings of fear and self-loathing from onlookers at how few fabulous parties they attend, scenic landscapes they visit, and beautiful people they are surrounded by.
Echoing Zygmunt Bauman’s sentiment that in our consumer culture, we are both ‘the commodity and the travelling salesperson’, in the fleeting quest for ever more likes, ‘friends’, and followers, individuals strain to appear supremely popular, beautiful and fun, if only for the validation of invisible others whose thumb movement on a screen carries the eschatological weight of the Roman emperor in the Coliseum.
At its core, this behaviour is an expression of a deep seated social belief: others will like us only if we are the funniest, coolest, or prettiest (or any other superlative one can conjure) person. Our relentless tidying up when company is over, our changing out of tracksuit pants and thongs when going out, and our putting on a false smile when friends are around all bear a striking similarity to Instagram influencers and Tinder users: they are examples of hiding our less-marketable qualities in the understandable but sorely mistaken belief that people will only like us for our accomplishments and despise us for our flaws.
We are all guilty of a paradoxical and hence, conflicting mentality: we believe that others like us only for our gifts and talents, and would turn away at the first sight of the muck beneath. Yet, at the same time, we long to have the worst parts of ourselves cherished, not because we think that our flaws are great in of themselves, but because they are part of what makes us human, and we do not want to pretend to be something we are not.
What allows people to get close to each other is the extent to which they drop the façade and reveal themselves in their gloriously flawed nature. Of course there is danger in this. We could be mocked, taunted and rejected for showing an unflattering part of ourselves; but the reverse holds true, we could also be praised, encouraged, and embraced for opening up and sharing some fundamental truths about ourselves. To be vulnerable is not to necessarily provide any useful information about oneself, or to expose one’s deepest secrets. It is, instead, to give something away, something precious and more valuable than anything to be found on the stock market: the key to one’s dignity and self-respect.
With proper handling, it is this key which opens the door to others and creates meaningful relationships, more than a clean house of a beautiful photo ever would. What makes friendship (unlike Facebook friends or Instagram followers) rich and rewarding, is not that our friends are perfect, but rather, that they trust us enough to share the parts of themselves that, in the wrong hands, would lead to emotional devastation, yet in the caring hands of a friend, makes one feel loved and accepted.
Jiddu Krishnamurti On Images & Relationships
Posted on February 23, 2021 Leave a Comment
‘All our relationships are really imaginary’, writes Krishnamurti in his collection of talks titled Freedom from the Known. ‘That is’, he continues, they are ‘based on an image formed by thought’.
According to Krishnamurti, we rarely see each other as we are now. We have memories of what someone likes and dislikes, things they have said to us and done to us, how they have moved us or failed us. We bundle these collection of memories, feelings, and intuitions about a person and say that is who they are. But this is, at most, who they were. Of course, who we are is based off who we were. But, this is almost irrelevant. To the extent that we see the person in the present through what they were in the past, we are engaging them through an image of them, rather than as they are, right now.
Naturally we don’t see each other at all as we actually are. What we see is the images we have formed about each other.
These images, he notes, are what ‘prevent us from being in contact’ with each other and that is where problems arise; because, people change.
When I say I know you, I mean I knew you yesterday. I do not know you actually ‘now’. All I know is an image of you. That image is put together by what you have said in praise of me or to insult me, what you have done to me – it is put together by all the memories I have of you – and your image of me is put together in the same way, and it is those images which have relationship and which prevent us from really communing with each other.
Imagine a scenario. You have been with your partner for years. When you first met them, you were very attentive to their every thought, observant of their every movement, thoughtful of their every need. You had no image of them, so you took it upon yourself to be as attentive, observant, thoughtful, and aware as possible. However, the years have passed and you have settled into a routine; routine questions, routine answers, routine offers, routine responses. You stop trying to get to know your partner because you believe you already know them.
But people are always changing. The change that is almost imperceptible from one day to the next takes on enormous proportions over the years. Maybe she now enjoys knitting. Maybe she doesn’t enjoy it but is curious and would like to take it up. Maybe he wants to learn a new language. Maybe, even though he has never shown an interest in it before, he would like to travel. You may not notice this. Or if you do, you say to them ‘that’s not like you’ or ‘don’t be silly, you don’t like those kinds of things’. You put them back in their box. Their interests and desires no longer conform to the image you have of them and you refute them. You see what is happening here? What you know is an ‘image’ of who they were, a collection of ideas, feelings, sensations, thoughts and memories of the past. But they are not the past! They are there, standing in front of you, in the present, with present ideas, feelings, sensations and thoughts that you cannot possibly be attentive to if you are living in the past.
The person they are, right now, is not something you can experience if you are constantly living through images of who they were. The image, therefore, interferes with reality. If we are to be in direct contact with anything, whether it be a painting, sunset, or a person, then we must let go of our prejudices, assumptions, and pre-conceived ideas – that is, our ‘images’. Only then will we come into contact with something as it is, and not as it was, or how we imagined it to be.
On Forgiveness
Posted on February 21, 2021 Leave a Comment
With our prodigious minds, we can recall fond memories throughout our years: birthday parties surrounded by friends and families, the first time we fell in love, the day we received our first A+. But, it is the irrevocable fact of life that one cannot have pleasure without pain. Just as we have fond memories filled with joy and happiness, we likewise have ones filled with pain and suffering.
We remember the nasty things said to us, done to us, and suffered by us at the hands of others: the bully who put us in chokeholds, the peers who taunted us about how we spoke, or the inattentive mother who turned a blind eye to our pains.
In all likelihood, we may never have forgiven others for what they did. We have held on to the hurt, in the process stopping ourselves from finding peace. In order to free ourselves from the self-imposed bondage of memory, we need to share one of the most precious gifts of the soul: forgiveness.
Just as we cannot fight fire with fire, we cannot extinguish the egregious hurt others have committed against us by holding on or deflecting that hurt back. Instead, by cultivating humility, patience and understanding towards those who have hurt us in the past, we allow ourselves the opportunity to forgive. Other people are – as we know all too well about ourselves – flawed, impaired and damaged. Rather than misanthropy, it is recognition that nobody is perfect in every way. When we remind ourselves of this, the fact that we have been hurt by them becomes more understandable. We can show forgiveness in the hope that others will do the same when we (inevitably) experience our own moments of weakness.
Yet, we hold ourselves to different standards than we hold others. To forgive others may be difficult, but one of the most monumentally difficult tasks in life is mustering the necessary kindness and affection to forgive ourselves. We are, unfortunately, often our own harshest critics and strictest moral teachers.
We can find the space in our hearts to forgive others, knowing they can sometimes be petty, impetuous, and almost incorrigibly blind to how their words or actions affect others. Yet, we hold ourselves to a different (and impossible) standard. We tell ourselves that we cannot be this way and that we must be (although we might never say it precisely this way), perfect.
When we withhold forgiveness from ourselves, we continue living in the past. We never move beyond what we have done, and we continue to allow these things to define us. The petty arguments we started in our last relationship, the time we kicked up a fuss when we were made to wait 20 minutes (even though they had a very good excuse), and the bitter breakup because we were unfaithful; are not seen as unfortunate errors that have given us an opportunity to learn, but rather as irrevocable stains of our character that will never wash away.
It would be wise and therapeutic for us to apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others. We are, just like everyone, prone to faults, missteps and mistakes. But these do not define us any more than they do others. Rather than immutable statements about our flawed nature, our past misdeeds should instead be seen as unfortunate but somehow necessary moments that have given us the opportunity to reflect and grow. In doing this, we can finally begin to forgive ourselves and nurture the most important and long lasting relationship we will ever have: the one we have with ourselves.
On Suffering in Silence
Posted on February 18, 2021 Leave a Comment
Almost everywhere we turn we are encouraged to express ourselves. Social media platforms extol us to share whatever is on our minds, advertisers promise their products will manifest our deeper-selves and reveal them to the world, our employers inform us we can ‘speak up’ about any issue without fear of reprimand, our friends remind us that we can tell them anything, and freedom of speech is one of our most cherished and highly valued freedoms. Despite all this (or perhaps, in spite of all this), we shut up (or shut down) those parts of ourselves that aren’t beautiful or readily marketable out of fear of rejection, judgement, or misunderstanding.
As with so many psychological problems, this likely has its roots in childhood. The parent who tells their child ‘you are driving me crazy’ or ‘you will be the end of me’, or who, perhaps, is going through enough problems of their own that the child sees that their own trouble would only add more weight to an unbearable load; sends a sometimes clear and other times implied message to the child to keep their sufferings to themselves.
As we grow up, we continue bottling up, and therefore perpetuating our suffering, so as not to annoy the people around us. We smile, appease, and do what we can to keep those around us happy; a poor compensation for an inner happiness we cannot have, or believe ourselves unworthy of. In this sense, we aren’t nice, but instead, scared. Our friendliness is not borne from choice, but from a fear of making others upset, just as we did our parents when we were younger.
What we need is two things. Firstly, we need to recognise how we do not want to speak up because we think the people we hold dear will find us broken, inept, and unworthy of their time; that is, we need to see how scared we are people will reject us for who we are beneath the thin veneer of false cheeriness we have carefully cultivated over the years. Secondly, we need to develop the courage and insight to open up and see that the people around us really care, and are here to accept us in all our hues; not just our best, but our worst too.
Just as we silently suffering around others, we also suffer silently within ourselves. Echoing Paul Goodman’s 9 Types of Silence, there is the ‘noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination’ a ‘loud and sub-vocal’ inner monologue of self-hate which drowns out the quiet whisper of the better part of ourselves that says ‘there are others here that love you and are here for you’.
There is another silence, the silence of absence. It is the suffering that has never been registered as suffering. It is not silent because it does not speak, but because it is not heard. When we act tough to avoid feeling pain, or run away from intimacy to avoid being hurt, we dress these up as acts of maturity in a turbulent and contradictory world. The suffering here is silent because the suffering has been dressed as pragmatic realism. If it is never registered for what it is, it cannot be acted upon properly.
Developing into the best versions of ourselves we can be demands that we begin to investigate and reflect on who we are and how, without our knowledge, we perpetuate our own suffering. Following this, we must then muster the necessary courage to share our suffering with those around us, knowing that they truly love us and we do not have to suffer in silence anymore.
Living In the World vs. Being Lived By the World: Martin Heidegger On Being an Authentic Self
Posted on February 17, 2021 Leave a Comment
It seems like a preposterous thought. How could I be anyone other than me? Of course, you can’t. But that isn’t exactly the point Heidegger is making in his hefty work, Being & Time. Heidegger asks us, ‘how much of you, is really you?’ And to what extent, following Krishnamurti, are we ‘second-hand people’, copying, mimicking, and absorbing the opinions and beliefs of others?
Heidegger likely saw many things in his time that we see in ours: people following the trends, wearing whatever clothes are in fashion, watching the top rated films, and expressing the popular opinion on topics of religion, politics and law; people relinquishing their childish qualities because they must be more ‘mature’, ceasing creating art and getting themselves a ‘real’ job, and denying their sexuality in order to conform to what society deems ‘acceptable’.
Ignoring the violence done to self-esteem, the problem in living this way, according to Heidegger, is we are not being true to ourselves. The unfortunate reality is that all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, are not completely true to who we are, and the task of our journey through time is to work on being the most authentic versions of ourselves we can be.
Our culture has a story that there is such a thing as one right way to live. It is often implicit, not explicit; not said loud enough to attract attention but whispered to you by your parents, advertisers, peers and politicians. Our desires, wishes, and beliefs, therefore, are brought into line with our culture’s expectations.
In turn, we adopt a way of being in the world that in large measure is determined by what they want. They want you to dress, talk, act, and live in a certain way. They want you to work a 9-5 job, pay your taxes, buy a house and retire at 60; wear a suit if you are a man, a dress if you are a woman; purchase commodities and be a good citizen. When we conform to what they want, we experience a certain ‘tranquillity’ for obeying the dictates of culture. We are told we are doing the right thing as the culture gives us an approving pat on the back. But this tranquillity is really tranquilising because you are putting yourself to sleep and becoming an expression of them, not of you.
It is reminiscent of the surgeon I discuss in the transformation from ‘individualism to blessedness’ in Australia Inc. The surgeon lives in the penthouse of a luxurious building in an exclusive suburb. He plays squash with ‘important’ people, attends the ‘best’ restaurants, and wears ‘proper’ clothes. On his bed is the finest linen, on his body the finest silks, on his tongue, talk of the finest wines. Assured of safety, security, liberty and freedom, he contents himself with the pursuit of personal gratification. Yet, the surgeon is a superficial man. He has rank, title, power and prestige. These, the surgeon thinks, makes him who he is. He has never questioned whether wealth and power is the right path or what would make him truly, deeply happy. He has not asked whether his title and rank are statements about him, or whether they are arbitrary signs and values society has accorded to him. In short, he has not asked what makes him, him. Thomas Mann sets this out perfectly in his novel The Magic Mountain,
An individual is one who takes upon himself an understanding of what is moral and who monitors his own conduct. A man who depends upon blessedness is one who relies upon God and his representatives to define morality and enforce it. He is a child of God – a ward who would not dream of claiming personal responsibility.
The difference between being an ‘individual’ and being ‘blessed’ is a reflection of the difference between I and they. The surgeon allows society to decide how he should live. Failing to think it through himself because it is too hard, or just so easy not to, he is an expression of them, but so little of what he does is an expression of him.
Being authentic does not mean doing something nobody else does or actively doing the opposite of what society says you should do. You may very well wish to be a police officer and obey the road rules, two common enough occurrences in society. But being authentic means you are a police officer not for rank or prestige, but of an inner desire, perhaps, to serve the community; and you obey the road rules because you see the value in driving safely, and not because you mindlessly do what you are told. Being authentic does not mean being utterly unique, it means being original, in the deeper sense that what you feel and what you want springs forth from yourself.
One of the greatest barriers to becoming authentic is the belief that we already think we are, engaging in all forms of intellectual gymnastics to hide from ourselves how alienated we have become. You might say ‘I really do like Nikes, I think they are cool’. But, it was they who put the idea in your head that there can even be such a thing as ‘cool shoes’. Alternatively, you might say ‘I believe there is nothing wrong with eating meat’. Have you investigated this for yourself? Or have you listened to every peer, parent, politician and advertiser who told you that? Your belief may be genuine, but that does not make it authentic. We try to justify decisions that have really been made for us, not by us in order to rescue a sense of agency and self-determination.
Consider a man who, not knowing what he wanted to do when finishing school, followed his parents’ advice and became an electrician. He never wanted to be one, however, the pay is good, the work is secure, and his colleagues are kind. He feels like something is wrong, that he is not living according to who he truly is, and instead, living out a life somebody else planned for him. All the outward signs (prestige, wealth, power) indicate that he is living correctly and on the right path. This, Heidegger notes, is where our ‘descent into groundlessness’ is interpreted (wrongly) as an ‘ascent’ into living correctly and ‘concretely’.
The friction between what I want and what they want manifests itself ‘with primordial, elemental concreteness, in anxiety’, the anxiety this man feels every day when he goes to work. Anxiety reflects deep down, things are not settled and that outward success is no compensation for inner poverty. Anxiety appears when we imagine the possibility of what life could be against the actuality of what it is now. In that space, a negative void reminds you that you are not living how you want to live. Anxiety is, in a way, a sign of your own authenticity, of the part of you that says ‘this is not what I want at all’. To ignore anxiety is to silence part of who you are and therefore, to further tranquilise yourself and continue living for them instead of you.
Being authentic requires us to ask a question we may have never considered, or once gave up on because the search for answers was too difficult. We must ask: Who Am I in its deepest and most profoundly existential dimension. What do you want to do with your time? What brings you satisfaction? What do you want from the world? What do you want to give to it? These questions are difficult and for many of us, simply unanswerable, because for so long we have allowed them to decide, we have no idea about what we actually want. The agony and anxiety caused by these questions are an indication, not of a problem, but that for the first time, you are trying to find a solution.
If we can approach the question of ‘who am I’, and its counterpart ’who do I want to be’ with the patience, empathy, and critical attention they deserve, we may come across entirely novel and different answers to questions we thought we had answered long ago, and in the process, begin the arduous and never ending journey of becoming more authentic versions of ourselves.
On Mental Blocks & What It Means To Really Listen
Posted on February 16, 2021 Leave a Comment
One of the problems that arise when listening to others, as David Bohm wrote in his exquisite work On Dialogue, is our belief ‘that one already is listening to the other person in a proper way’. It is always the other person who is misguided, isn’t it? It is the dangerously misplaced belief that we are doing something right (and not just when listening) that ‘blocks’ us from seeing how we might be doing it wrong, and therefore, improving through reflection.
Similar to how we notice other people’s annoying habits, but rarely our own, the ‘block’ which Bohm details, is an ‘insensitivity of anaesthesia about one’s own contradictions’. For example, I am an atheist and my friend is a Christian. We are discussing God and I can plainly see that everything she says is filtered through the lens of her religious convictions. I find her reasoning limited and her judgment flawed. She passes over the difficult questions and answers a different one altogether. She hits mental walls where she cannot follow her own train of thought because it would lead her to contradict her basic position. She is unable to speak freely and therefore, her logic is often fallacious, and her answers often nonsensical. It is easy to see the blocks in another person and no awards are handed out for it. But what of my own? What of my blocks? My adherence to the non-existence of God will in turn lead to its own ‘blocks’ that while different, are no less problematic. The result is a conversation (if you can call it that) that traverses well-explored territory. Or, rather, it is two kings exploring their own territory behind high walls, neither seeing nor interested in what is on the other side. Neither person grows because neither person wishes to leave their position. Tracing the internal landscape of a ‘blocked’ individual, Bohm writes,
Whenever certain questions arise, there are fleeting sensations of fear, which push him away from consideration of these questions, and of pleasure, which attract his thoughts and cause them to be occupied with other questions. So one is able to keep away from whatever it is that he thinks may disturb him. And as a result, he can be subtly defending his own ideas, when he supposes that he is really listening to what other people have to say.[i]
And how many weird uncles or overly zealous friends have we spoken to who, while thinking themselves as good listeners genuinely concerned about what you have to say, are nevertheless busy defending their own ideas, not taking the time to actually hear what you are saying?
The block arises when become more focused on defending a position than inquiring into the truth. Of course, we will never say this. More likely, we already believe our position to be the truth, which amounts to the same thing.
When we are busy defending our position (vaccines cause autism, climate change is a left-wing scam), we lose the ability to speak freely. We become committed to a stance that disallows the creative and free flow of meaning that is at the heart of communication. In defending a position, we stop ourselves from growing and learning anything and merely experience repetitions of the same old thoughts. Bohm continues,
Communication can lead to the creation of something new only if people are able freely to listen to each other, without prejudice, and without trying to influence each other. Each has to be interested primarily in truth and coherence, so that he is ready to drop his old ideas and intentions, and be ready to go on to something different, when this is called for. If, however, two people merely want to convey certain ideas or points of view to each other, as if these were items of information, then they must inevitably fail to meet. For each will hear the other through the screen of his own thoughts, which he tends to maintain and defend, regardless of whether or not they are true or coherent.[ii]
If we could, only for a moment, drop our own prejudices, assumptions and preconceived beliefs, we may come across something entirely new, fresh and interesting. Of course, we may not. We might be talking to a very boring and simple person. But, at least, when we drop our position, we open up the space for this to occur, and that is something that would not have happened otherwise if we were just busy defending ourselves.
Despite what we may say to the contrary, we are not very good at listening. We are good at judging, discriminating, criticising, and comparing, but not listening. Listening involves a type of silence, not the silence of a mind waiting to speak, but of a mind receptive to what is being said; a mind both empathetic and understanding, working in good faith with others to try to discover the truth.
Real communication, as Carl Jung observed, involves not only sharing your beliefs, but sharing in the others’ too. You must fully identify with your partner in conversation. It is reminiscent of Gadamer’s art of conversation as “a process of coming to an understanding” and that therefore, “it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the particular individual but what he says”.[iii] If you are a pro-vaxxer, you must identify with the position of the anti-vaxxer. Why have they come to the position they have? Was it distrust in government, evidence of corruption in science, the links between research and big money? It is on these grounds, the ground of your partner’s point of view, that the conversation must be held. It is only with the quality of total listening, which demands identification with the other that we will begin to understand. It does not mean you must agree, but that at least now you understand why they form the position they do. It will, therefore, allow the conversation to proceed from a considerably more stable starting point. Hopefully, we will reach new understandings. It isn’t certain, nothing is, but it is worth trying.
Being a good listener is very similar to being a good friend and lover, because in each, you are a partner on a journey. If you make it all about yourself, it will fail. If you refuse to ever see the other’s point of view, it will fail. You are required to have empathy, understanding and importantly, love. Not love in the erotic sense, but in the sense of reaching out and overcoming the fear of losing yourself. It is with these qualities that we will be able to overcome our blocks, become better listeners, and, in the process, become better friends and lovers too.
[i] Bohm, D.B., 2014. On Dialogue. New York: Routledge. 4.
[ii] Bohm, D.B., 2014. On Dialogue. New York: Routledge. 3.
[iii] Gadamer, H.G.G., 2013. Truth and Method. United States: Bloomsbury. 403.
On Kintsugi
Posted on February 14, 2021 Leave a Comment
In a society such as ours, which glorifies the flawless, unblemished and perfect, we have a conditioned (but by no means natural) desire to hide our flaws, minimising the parts of ourselves that are damaged, warped, or otherwise ugly, in the hope that we too will appear as an object of perfection and therefore, worthy of being loved.
We have this deep seated (yet misguided) belief in necessary perfection. We despise our own bodies because they do not live up to the photoshopped standards of the models and athletes that don magazine covers. We believe that healthy relationships should be free of fights and disagreements; a smooth, frictionless affair. We believe everything from our emotional and psychological states, down to our very DNA (as the global interest in gene editing demonstrates) should be free of blemishes and stains. Cracks in the heart (take a pill) or cracks in the face (inject some Botox) must be promptly eradicated.
It is considered improper and indicative of poor etiquette to share personal travails and tribulations with those whom we do not know exceptionally well. The proper response to ‘how are you?’ must always be a flat, asexual ‘good, thank you’. Dismay and misfortune must be kept at bay. While nobody explicitly states it, your Facebook posts must recount your successes, not failures; and your Instagram must only show you on a cruise in Croatia surrounded by other beautiful (and presumably) young acquaintances, and not you curled up on the couch eating pizza and crying over your dismal university marks.
First dates exemplify the problem. We extoll our wonderful qualities. We focus on what makes us wonderful, exceptional, and talented. We make ourselves out to be (even if we know it is not the case) to be perfectly complete, whole, and high-functioning individuals with no trace of animosity or brokenness within. We do not mention our past failures, misdemeanours, or that mental breakdown we had just one month ago. We like to keep hidden the parts about ourselves we see as defective. Nobody wants to buy a broken toy.
But, there is an entirely different way to look at things. Sure, you cheated on your girlfriend. But, from the repercussions you learnt the importance of honesty, openness, and loyalty to another person; and what it means to live not only for yourself, but for someone else too. You developed a debilitating injury, but in becoming so depressed, you developed an inner strength that allowed you to rise above your injury and enjoy life in a way that someone who has never been deeply in pain ever could. You had a mental breakdown just a month ago, but that gave you the space to observe and conquer parts of yourself that you never would have been able to without it. These ‘flaws’ have not made you ugly at all; rather, they have made you beautiful in an entirely new way.
It is here that the Japanese practice of Kintsugi reveals itself as an art form deeply embedded in the human experience. In Kintsugi, a broken bowl, vase, or any object, is repaired, the cracks joined together with a gold lacquer so that rather than minimising the signs of repair, they are instead highlighted and celebrated as something beautiful.
What Kintsugi teaches us is that what has damaged, warped, or broken us, is not something to be ashamed of. You have lived through it, and although you do not exemplify an abstract and perfected standard of beauty, you have become beautiful in your own way.
Consider this tree. It does not fit into our standard notion of what a ‘tree’ should look like. It is not stern, upright and solid. It is twisted, warped, and altogether precariously perched on a rocky mountain top. What events happened to the young sapling that led it to grow in such a ‘deformed’ and peculiar way? By all accounts, the tree fails to achieve the standard set by the trees in the forest beyond. The very hardships this tree experienced – an awkward growing position, complete exposure to the elements, snapped limbs from overly excitable animals – are precisely the things which has made it so unique, exceptional, and in its own way, beautiful.
The events in our lives that have left us scarred, broken and bruised, are not necessarily indicators that we are in some way deformed and ugly. Rather, they can be, like a Kintsugi bowl, celebrations of what makes us so unique and, in the hands of a properly attentive person, beautiful.
On Letting Go
Posted on February 13, 2021 Leave a Comment
‘Better to have loved and lost / than to have never loved at all’ wrote Tennyson in his work In Memoriam, discerning the negative qualities of something do not necessarily discount or negate its positive ones. And so it is with a lover now gone. The pain one feels now should not justify deleting the experience from existence in a ‘sunshine of the spotless mind’.
Yet, while we may agree intellectually with Tennyson’s sentiment, when we are sitting across from an empty chair or walking alone along a pier seeing couples holding hands, it becomes immensely difficult, ridiculous even, to agree emotionally. We can agree with our head it seems, but not with our heart.
Once again, intellectually, we may acknowledge loss cannot be separated from love. We know that even without a break up and the blessing to spend our entire lives together, one day one of us will still be looking over the casket of the other. Yet the intellect provides no solace to the soul. We know that eventually one was destined to leave, but that does not make it hurt any less. The realm of the intellect is neat and formal, but the realm of the heart abides by no such standards of cleanliness, it is a messy and often chaotic place. What may be clear to the intellect is not immediately clear to the heart.
The antagonism between holding on and letting go leaves us feeling caught between an emotional Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand, if we hold on, this person can remain as a precious memory in our heart. Love will continue, even if the agony of their loss will haunt each precious memory and poison it. On the other hand, we could let them go, but then we would come face to face with ourselves as the petty, ignorant, broken individuals we are; if we were better after all, would they not have stayed? Between the rocky shoals of holding on and the whirlpool of letting go; navigating the precarious passage seems impossible.
When we hold on, we fail to move into the present. We tell ourselves that while our lover is now gone, that they have been mistaken and will soon realise their error and return. With the music of love absent, we fill the empty space with the misguided symphony of hope; the opiate of a broken heart. ‘When we eventually acknowledge the asymmetry of feeling’ writes Maria Popova in her masterwork Figuring, ‘we first labour to persuade ourselves that the intensity of our own love is reward enough’[1]. Soon, when the illusion of return dissolves, we grasp onto another illusion (no less illusory but feeling so as we reflect on our previous attitude) that while our love is no longer reciprocated, the strength of our own love is so strong that it will sustain us. We tell ourselves that we will continue to adore them from a distance, finding solace and fulfilment in our unrequited love. But this illusion too fades and we realise this love is empty and we must now deal with the loss that was too raw to deal with originally.
Letting go carries its own metaphysical burden. Thinking about a life without your partner seems like the highest betrayal. We think that if we let go, it is proof that the love itself was never genuine in the first place. We want to believe that the one whom we loved was truly special and unique, and therefore, if we let go of them and transform them into a memory, they become like every other person we have met, flattened in the one-dimensional space of recollection. If we accept we can let go, then this person becomes just like any other person we could have met, and our love becomes diminished in our own eyes, a product of chance rather than destiny.
Perhaps we are destined to love, but not destined for the one whom we love. If this is true, to love fully, to love deeply, and to continue loving, we must be willing to accept loss as an essential feature in any relationship. This does not mean that we should count on, expect or hope for the moment our beloved leaves us, but rather, it means we should recognise the fleeting and ephemeral nature of love. ‘A consideration of death’ wrote Alan Watts, ‘can lead to a greater appreciation of life’. Considering that every love must inevitably come to an end may prompt us to act differently. We may realise because our time together is conditional, not guaranteed; momentary, not everlasting, that we should savour each moment we have together, which may lead to a richer, more fulfilling relationship. Accepting that once things have run their course that this should not be a cause for despair, but a cause for celebration for time spent well together, of a life lived fully. In turn, we will be prepared for the inevitable loss and rather than running away from it, be slightly better equipped to deal with it.
[1] Popova, M.P., 2020. Figuring. Great Britain: Canongate Books. 348
Listening To a Friend
Posted on January 30, 2021 Leave a Comment
Your friend has just been dumped by their girlfriend. Limp, depressed, and possessed with a weltschmertz threatening to degenerate into total apathy to life, they begin telling you about their suffering, about how they miss those texts ‘good morning’ each day, and how – as is common when we have nothing left but memories to provide solace – those idiosyncrasies that once annoyed him, now bring a smile to his face. Your friend continues that it is hard to find anything worth smiling about now, with every day seeming bleaker than the last.
‘There is so much to be happy about’ you reply to your friend, as you list all the joyous things they have (including having a friend so adept at listening). But this does not seem to cheer them up.
Are you at all surprised? All you have done is affirm the distance between yourself and your friend, between one who is content (or, at least, not manically depressed) and one who is not. If anything, your friend’s depression has been compounded with shame, because not only are they depressed, but they are now depressed because they seemingly do not even have the right to be depressed.
None of this is said, but it is certainly felt in your friend’s heart. Unmoved, you tell them to pick up yoga, focus on the things that are great in life, or go out and meet someone else, after all, there are so many fish in the sea. Once more, this does not change your friend’s countenance one iota.
Are you at all surprised? There is danger in telling people what they ought to do. When people are depressed, they are not looking for a teacher, they are looking for a friend; looking for a (mental or physical) embrace, not a guidebook. We often fall into this – well-meaning, yet misguided – trap of providing advice when people open up to us. What those in need require, even if it may not seem so to us, are not instructions on how to live their life, but patience, kindness, and the subtle understanding that indeed, life does suck at the moment, but it won’t forever. To be there for someone requires us to stop thinking about what we think should happen, but to focus, here and now, on what is actually happening. It means responding to them, not as a person who needs help, but as one who needs comfort. At its most fundamental, it means listening, really listening; that is, not listening merely to give a response, but to hearing out the inner anguish and unheard screams of a hurting soul.
If your friend wanted advice, they would have asked for it. Give them the credit – as you would expect others to give to you – that they will reach out for help if they need it. Sometimes we need help, but sometimes we just need someone to listen to us, to feel with us, and to understand us. It requires a particular kind of silence; the silence of a mind that is receptive to the other, without simply waiting to speak.
The redemptive power of friendship is more powerful than any advice. Rather than telling your friend what they ought to do, you could instead, place your hand on theirs, stare into their eyes, and tell them, with words that carry the weight of one who feels what they say in their very bones, that ‘I hear you’. Reminiscent of one of the 4 mantras of Thich Nhat Hanh,
The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence. So the first mantra is very simple: “Dear one, I am here for you”.
Cultivating presence and really being there for someone is an incredibly difficult task, yet one of the most enriching and gratifying aspects of friendship. The most powerful remedy to depression is not advice on how to be happy, but on knowing that despite everything that has happened, you are not alone. If you can show your friend that you are there for them, your presence will help them heal more than any advice ever could.
The Power of Imagination
Posted on January 29, 2021 Leave a Comment
In his work Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl remarks that while being able to imagine a future beyond the camps did not stop death, it did create the opportunity for life. He observed that with sufficient imagination, we can tolerate the intolerable. He was, after all, a survivor of the holocaust.
While our problems may not be quite as severe, they are no less deserving of attention and empathy; and likewise, how we learn to deal with them will benefit from a proper dose of imagination.
When a loved one passes away, we cannot imagine getting through the day without their cute reminders that they are there for us; when a partner leaves, we cannot imagine waking up in the morning to an empty pillow beside us; when we receive a debilitating injury, we cannot imagine getting through the day with a constant jarring pain every time we take a step. We cannot imagine a world different to the one we currently inhabit. We stop. Walls rise around us. We become unable to summon an alternative world where things could be different than they are now.
In one of the many self-fulfilling prophecies of the mind, whatever we think will be, becomes. We turn life into the experience we already believe it to be. If we believe our loneliness will always be painful and our injury always debilitating, than this will be the case. Of course, this is not an argument of magical thinking, but rather a recognition that, to a significant extent, the world is a reflection of how we already perceive it to be. In this sense, we live very much in our own minds.
It is surely difficult, especially when we are oppressed by intense suffering, to conjure the necessary strength to see things differently. As is often the case, we fall into the trap of nostalgia. We may try and reconnect with an old flame after our partner has left us, or we may spend our time rummaging through old photographs after the death of a loved one, or we may run back to an old job when our current one does not work out. Of course, these may sometimes be necessary short term mechanisms to help us get through things. But we can easily trap ourselves in loops of returning to the past, rather than creating entirely new scenarios for ourselves in the future. Frankl cautions, we must reject the narrow prison of the past and embrace the spacious freedom of the present. Unable to imagine a fundamentally different future, all we can see is images of our past.
‘There is a danger’, writes Frankl, ‘in robbing the present of its reality’. By ‘closing our eyes and living in the past’, we seal our fate and doom ourselves to live in a reality that no longer exists. Despair offers us all a ‘challenge’, and ultimately, it is up to us whether we decide to make a ‘victory’ out of opportunity, or ‘vegetate’ in defeat. What we require, is sufficient imagination to craft a future out of the broken pieces before us.
In his work The Body Keeps the Score, the psychoanalyst Bessel Van Der Kolk writes,
Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities – it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes comes true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasures, and enriches our most intimate relationships. When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss of mental flexibility.
Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.
Imagination is a metaphysical springboard, lifting us off from the past towards a future not yet defined or clearly seen, but certainly just as (if not more) interesting and exciting as what came before.
Of course, telling ourselves and others to let go of the past and keep on moving is easier said than done. Sometimes, when things get particularly bad, the dark chasm we find ourselves in seems immeasurably deep and impenetrable to the light of benevolent thoughts. We simply cannot imagine that after our loved one is struck down with disease that life will ever be joyous or happy; or that after the person we thought we would spend life with leaves us, that we could ever love again. These are our darkest moments and they call for a commensurate amount of inner strength and determination. With imagination, despair can be transformed into courage, and defeat into acceptance, appreciating that while your life may never be what it was, you have the power to determine what it will become.
Proper Candor 